Baptism in Energon
by Draconic Caduceus
Summary: Armonie had a nice life: a good job that she enjoyed, a caring husband, and two good kids. But beneath her skin and in her daughter she could see the "fire" burning. Then the Decepticons attacked and her hold of the fire, tenuous at best, was broken.
1. Introduction

**Takes place a month or so after the events of _Friendship Like Phosphorus_. Jordan, Katie, and Armonie all live together in Jordan's house while Katie's is being rebuilt. **

**Katie herself will not feature too much in this story as this is primarily bonding between Jordan and Armonie (and Mutt). They hadn't really gotten around too much to get to know the person they had worked to save.**

* * *

Armonie didn't like going to the base, Mutt even more so so the both of them tended to stay as far away as possible. The very few times that they had traveled back, it hadn't ended well so it was entirely understandable.

But that didn't mean that the government didn't try to drag them in by bribery or threats. It seemed that humans with such knowledge _simply shouldn't_ be left to roam the world. Armonie was the closest thing on Earth to a cybernetic being and even the few paltry scans that the Autobots were able to run on her gave them very little information due to the "blockers" installed beneath the thin plating of her false limbs.

Even with the...odd kind of security and secrecy at the NEST base, word traveled fast. It seemed that every soldier on base knew about her prosthetics and the "docking" implant in her skull that allowed her to "connect" to her Rogue companion. Whenever she walked on base, they stopped to stare and whisper.

Armonie was simply...strange and so was the Rogue that followed her like a shadow. He alone made the others uneasy, blindly following her around the base. No other Autobot could do that, not without moving their alternate forms. And no other Autobot would choose an _animal_ as their hardlight projection…

So Armonie and Mutt studiously avoided the base and Jordan couldn't blame them one bit. Jack could treat her prosthetics if there were issues and if any of the other Rogues got injured, he could fix them as well.

That was another thing. Because they _needed_ labels, the base humans gave them one. The Rogue Hunters. The Rogue Autobots. The Rogues.

Personally, Jordan thought it suited them. None of them wanted to be called Autobots; not anymore. Obeying orders would have resulted in death and destruction...well, more than they caused during their hunt.

From the way Armonie practically kicked open the door, the visit to the base had gone poorly. Mutt stalked around the corner first and Jordan looked over, no longer wary around him. His chosen shape today wasn't the Irish wolfhound he had been favoring since the end of their hunt. In fact, Jordan was fairly certain it wasn't really an animal that existed in either his or Armonie's imagination.

"The cabinets are new," she reminded him, ignoring the dark look he shot her. He shook out his sloped shoulders, making the bony quills perched there rattle eerily. "But maybe if you scratch them up we can get Jack to re-stain them. I'm not sure I like the colors."

Mutt gave an eerie, wailing bark and flopped down on the kitchen tile with a tired groan. "It was terrible," he admitted to her, surprising her with his candor. While he had warmed up to her somewhat, he still rarely spoke and even then it had to be prodded out of him; it was a good day when he gave her a nod in greeting.

"Want me to put out a bowl of stew?" Jordan asked as she cut her sandwich in half. "I didn't hear Army come through…"

There was a hiss and a rattle as Mutt raised his head. "She's stuck in the doorway. Recalibrating," he told her as he let his big head flop back down. "Something hot," he added in response to her first question.

Jordan opened the large refrigerator and dug around for the leftovers. Between Jazz and Armonie, they were never lacking in food. "There's some curry, too," she added around the door.

"Stew," Mutt said, turning into Hot Rod for a moment as he peered around one wing of the door. Jordan obligingly released it and stepped aside so he could have more room. "Stew," he repeated with a nod and handed Jordan the container; evidently he wasn't about to heat it up.

Shaking her head at him as his form rippled back into a four-legged one, she dumped the entire sloppy mess of it into a saucepan and began heating it on the stove. To her initial frustration, neither Armonie nor Jazz seemed to believe in microwaves; Katie had given her a long-suffering _just deal with it_ kind of look when she had hesitantly mentioned it. But she was used to it now, and warming things like stew on the stove at least made it easier to heat evenly even if it dirtied more dishes.

Mutt nudged her hip with his hyena-like face and she accepted the bowl he offered in his jaws. "They asked us questions," he told her, again surprising her with his willingness to talk. Perhaps it was because Armonie was "recalibrating" and couldn't pet him. Seeing the fearsome fangs that peeked out from his lips, Jordan wasn't sure if she had the courage to do so.

"They're too curious for their own good," Jordan muttered. "Humans are like that."

The holoform nudged her again, wiggling his blocky head between her hip and the stove and she peeked down under her arm to look down at his beady eyes. "You're not," he said when she met his eyes. "You don't ask us."

"Armonie already gave me the bare-bones," she told him. "And you're both still hurting. Why would I drag it all up?"

"We'd tell you," Armonie said from behind her and Jordan jumped, nearly spilling the saucepan. "If...if you asked."

Jordan glanced over at her. For once Armonie looked almost human rather than a statue of a beautiful woman; her eyes were red and puffy as if she had been crying and her lips and hands twitched with residual emotion. "For now we'll settle with you venting to me," she said firmly, stirring the stew one final time before pouring a portion into the bowl and turning off the stove. "Then, if we're both - well, all _three_ of us - are up to it, we can have story time."

"Four," Kent added, appearing behind her.

She took a deep, fortifying breath and didn't even pretend to hide how she had reached for the hot saucepan as a weapon. "Stop _doing_ that," she snapped at him. For the past few days he had been popping up behind her when she least expected it. Even though more than a month had passed since the Hunt, she was still on edge, still jumpy, and his constant surprises were only making it worse.

"Sorry," Kent said the way he did every time. Unrepentant bastard.

Jordan hip-checked him out of her way and looped an arm around Armonie's lower back. She led the other woman to the dining room table, complete with a gorgeous hand-carved table made by Jack. Without looking, she knew that Mutt, rather than Kent, brought her sandwich plate after them.

The two women sat in comfortable silence, eating their meals. Kent moved to sit beside Jordan but at her glare took a spot two seats down; Mutt flopped under the table, stretching out so that his hind legs were tangled with Jordan's socked feet and his head and front paws were on Armonie's. It was surprisingly domestic and no one spoke as the women ate.

Done, Armonie put her spoon down with a final _clack!_ and looked at Jordan until she met her eyes. There was a challenge in there. "Tit for tat," Armonie said, tipping her chin upwards. "Story for a story."

Jordan tapped a finger to the scar on her skull, not visible to Armonie due to their positions. "Mine is a little less...difficult to tell."

" _Fine_ ," Armonie said with a teasing grin. "If I tell you our story, you tell me yours _and_ you cook dinner for a week."

"She can't cook," Kent reminded them dryly from where he sat. "That's not a very good deal."

Armonie shot him a _look_. " _Cleaning_ , then?"

"Whatever payment you want," Jordan told her, reaching across the table to tangle their fingers together. Armonie's prosthetic fingers felt almost real against her own, the only difference being in the almost-too-tight grip when Armonie responded. "If you want to get it off your chest, I'll listen."

Armonie gulped and looked away, for once looking bashful. "I need a drink."

"More than enough of of that here," Kent muttered, standing and returning quickly with a bottle of Jordan's good whiskey and two glasses.

Beneath the table, Mutt huffed. "I can tell that Dan keeps you around for your sunny disposition," he said dryly, a little muffled by the table. "And the lovely things you say of her."

Prowl shot him an unimpressed look as he poured their drinks and the women disentangled their hands in favor of wrapping them around their glasses. They sat in silence for a while. Jordan munched on the chips still lingering on her plate and seeing Armonie glance at them, she went to the kitchen to get the rest of the bag and a jar of dip that Jazz had been experimenting with. They shared the snack between them quietly, Jordan occasionally sipping from her drink.

"I don't know where to begin," Armonie admitted at last.

"Wherever and whenever you want," Jordan told her, reaching over to pat her prosthetic wrist.

Armonie sat, rolling her thoughts around in her mouth. "Monday," she said suddenly. "It was on a Monday."

"Mondays are the _worst_ ," Mutt said from under the table.

Jordan gave a shy, hesitant smile. "Nothing good happens on a Monday."

Under the table, Mutt wiggled, kicking her ankles as his paws slipped on the tile. "Well," Armonie said, sounding almost bashful. The hand not cradling her whiskey ducked under the table to scratch Mutt's cheek like one would do to an affectionate dog. "I met Mutt, here, on a Monday."

"That's a good thing?" Jordan teased and Armonie's face brightened; she threw her head back and laughed. Mutt wiggled so he could poke his head above the table and shoot her a betrayed look.

Armonie wrapped an arm around his big head and sipped from the whiskey. "Maybe not," she agreed. "But we're stuck with each other, I think. We've been through a lot together."

"I'm sure," Jordan agreed.

They edged around the subject of Armonie's story for a while longer, patting Mutt's head where it rested against her ribs. She took a drink of the whiskey and hummed. "This is good."

Jordan gave her a self-deprecating smirk and raised her glass in a mocking toast; Armonie made a face. "Don't," Jordan told her when she opened her mouth. "It's fine." Jordan didn't throw the rest of the whiskey back, knowing that with what she already knew of Armonie's past, she'll be wanting to do that later. And she wanted to be aware enough to hear Armonie's story if she was comfortable enough to share the "unedited" version.

From her subspace pocket, Armonie pulled out her wallet; from there she produced a well-worn photo which she pushed gently across the table toward Jordan. There was a man with his arm wrapped around a younger Armonie's waist and two teenagers standing in front of them. The boy and girl, who didn't look to be much older than 14, tentatively held hands like two siblings being forced to do so. The girl had pink and blue streaks in her hair, making the gentle waves look more like cotton candy than hair; the boy wore soccer gear, like he had just come from a game or practice.

"Agostino and I met...in college," Armonie said. "Well, _he_ was in college; I was doing my military service. We dated for a bit, much to the...concern of my family." There was more there that Armonie chose to gloss over; Jordan ignored it and looked at the picture in her hands. Perhaps grief and the hunt for vengeance had aged the woman across from her. In the picture she looked to be closer to Jordan's age; the woman that sat across from her now seemed older, tougher, now. "We married when I was 20 and we had Amina and Angelo a year later. Twins, if you didn't notice."

Jordan chuckled. "Never would have guessed," she teased. "How old?"

"Fifteen, about to turn sixteen," Armonie said, carefully brushing her fingers over the photo when Jordan handed it back. "Amina was the sporty one; Angelo was the artsy one. It drove Agostino mad to know that his _daughter_ , not his _son_ was better at sports."

She couldn't help it; Jordan snorted into her drink. "Dad was the same," she admitted when Armonie looked up. "Wanted a son, got a daughter. He had been so _sure_ and was crushed when they handed him a pink blanket, not a blue. 'S why my name's 'Jordan' - androgyny was the best way to get him to accept it."

Armonie nodded. "With Angelo and Amina, Agostino could at least pretend that one was the other. That was one of the only reasons he was angry that I let Amina dye her hair." She bared her teeth in a grin. "As you already know, I'm not very...merciful." Jordan gave her another mocking toast and finished off her whiskey. Kent immediately reached over and refilled the glass, ignoring the glare she gave him for it. "So I took Amina with me running, let Angelo sleep. I knew that both of us would have loved the look on Agostino's face when she proved them wrong. She had...she had the same fire in her that I did."

"What _fire_ ," Mutt said against Armonie's chest. "What aim! She threw a rock at one of my optic sensors when we first met."

They trailed off into comfortable silence. Armonie threw the whiskey back without a wince at the burn, not that Jordan had expected to see one. At Jordan's glare, Kent rolled his eyes and refilled Armonie's glass. This time she sipped half the glass and put it down. She licked her lips. "I suppose that's a good place as any to start."

* * *

 **The questioning that Mutt and Armonie are referring to is also mentioned in the chapter "Walk Instead of Run" from _Compass_. Given all of her "modifications" and the purposefully vague answers she gives in order to hide what really happened and who was involved, she tends to get more questions than most. In the name of curiosity (scientific, military, human nature) many of those questions are hurtful and the hardships she faced and still faces are completely overlooked.**


	2. Chapter 1

**Also posted on Archive of our Own under the pseudonym Dracoduceus.**

* * *

"Think we'll see the meteor?" Amina whispered to Armonie as they tied their shoes on the front porch.

"Hmm?" Armonie asked, glancing at her daughter out of the corner of her eyes. Unlike Angelo who had seemed to have inherited his father's height, Amina Marie more closely resembled her mother. It made running together every morning a lot easier, not that Angelo had an easy time keeping up with his sister and mother.

Amina smiled and nudged her shoulder into her mother's. "The meteor. Angelo and I were on the roof and we saw something break the atmosphere nearby."

"Don't tell your father that," Armonie told her, tightening her laces and checking the pouch that held her phone. "What direction?"

Her daughter hummed, glancing up at the upper-story windows of her and her brother's rooms to orient herself. Turning, she pointed out to the woods on their right. "There," she said. "A little further than our usual route."

"We can extend," Armonie assured her. "But there might be people there that won't like us being there." It wouldn't be the first time they ran into someone...unsavory on their morning runs. If they got through unscathed, it would be another thing to add to the list of Things Not to Tell Your Father.

Amina rolled her eyes and stretched out her legs, impatient as ever to get running. If she was cold in the pre-dawn air, she gave no sign, bouncing on her toes. "Come _on_ \- you're so _slow_!"

With a laugh that would have woken Angelo had he not slept like the dead, Armonie jumped to her feet, pushed past Amina, and took off down the path she and Amina had long worn into the grass beside the driveway.

"No fair!" Amina yelled, her feet slapping the ground as she chased after her mother. Armonie hurdled the little fence surrounding their running tree and slapped the bark. She jumped the other side of the fence and took off down their path, slowing to let her daughter catch up to her. " _No fair_ ," Amina muttered as she caught up.

Armonie nudged her with a shoulder as they settled into a good running pace. "Life's not fair," she informed her daughter loftily, ruining her statement with her large grin.

They were quiet as they ran, taking in the spicy scents of the trees around them and the dewy scent of a cool morning. Their usual path took them along the edges of their property, past lemon and olive trees and a few stubborn grapevines.

Armonie _liked_ living in this area, being so far away from other people. It was a long drive to work and to drop the kids off at school, but it felt _nice_ , like she got to spend more time with them even if more often than not Amina was coaching Angelo through last-minute studying. It was far from being what she was used to, having grown up within arm's reach of the merciless desert. After marrying Agostino, it had taken some getting used to, feeling the clinging, damp touches of the humidity present in Italy constantly running its fingers over her every waking moment. Now she enjoyed it, the resinous smell of the deep evergreen forests, the spicy smell of herbs and the sweet scent of fruit trees and their flowers.

Now she breathed in the smell of wet dirt and grass, felt the cool morning air, made cooler by the shade of the towering trees, and smiled. At the fork in the path, Armonie paused to let Amina catch up to her.

Her daughter's blue and pink streaks were darker and strands of her curly hair had struggled free of the neat braids she had wrestled them in before going on their run. "You're too fast," she muttered to her mother, swiping the back of her hand across her forehead.

"I've been doing this since-"

" _Before I was born_ ," Amina finished with her, rolling her eyes. "I know, I _know_ , _Ima_."

Armonie pinched her cheek, much to her daughter's embarrassment. Her fingers slipped on her sweaty skin and Armonie laughed at the face Amina made at her. "And don't you forget it!" she added triumphantly. "Now, _neshama_ , where is this meteor you wanted to see?"

It was worth Agostino's ire if he found out to see Amina's entire face light up. Perhaps it was completely unhealthy for her and her daughter to keep secrets like this from Agostino, but Armonie had never claimed to be a healthy individual.

Ever since she had been young, her father had told her about the fire of the desert in their blood. He told her that everyone in their line had it, that they could trace their lineage to kings and princesses, warriors and assassins. No one in their family could ever be happy with a quiet life, not without finding a way to release the fire.

Most of her family did this by joining the military - all of her uncles, her father, and even many of her aunts had impressive military backgrounds, enough that her unit had nearly salivated at the thought of her joining them at her date of conscription; she thought she broke them when she admitted that she wanted to stay longer than her mandatory period. It was enough to make her laugh even so many years later.

She watched Amina look around, orienting herself with the trees, the glow of the sun on the horizon, the air. It was another thing that ran in their family, an observance of the subtle things that seemed to give more information than it should. Armonie knew it wasn't something mystic; they had gone running together since Amina could keep up (and since Agostino had stopped complaining that she was turning his daughter into something unwomanly). Amina simply knew the forest and their favorite paths like the back of her hand.

Amina pointed to the path to their left, even if it led away from the stretch of forest she had indicated earlier. "It'll bring us on a loop," she explained. "And I don't know about you, but I like a few obstacles." Even though she was guiding them, she still waited patiently for Armonie's approval; her daughter had learned very quickly not to run away from her, a trait her brother did not share. "The rains weren't that hard," she added, anticipating her mother's response. "So there'll be mud but not too bad."

"Yeah," Armonie said with a laugh. "Your _padre_ doesn't like that very much."

Her daughter threw her head back in a laugh. "I hope one day I love someone like you hate _Vati_."

Laughing, Armonie punched her daughter's shoulder - _gently_ \- and gestured to the path Amina indicated. "We've wasted enough time; let's go!"

"Slave driver," Amina groaned good-naturedly, bumping her shoulder into her mother's as she ran off. "Catch me if you can, old lady!"

Throwing her head back, Armonie allowed herself a moment to laugh at that. "I'm not old!" she yelled after her daughter and took off. Amina was right and there was mud, but she ducked into the trees, careful of their roots and slippery bark, racing along after her daughter on more solid ground than the swampy paths she tried to travel.

"Cheater!" Amina yelled, her voice bouncing off the trees as she floundered in an unexpected puddle. She swore when she pitched over, her foot caught in the thick mire.

"Language!" Armonie replied over her shoulder, pausing at the turn to make sure her daughter didn't drown.

Amina propped herself up on her elbows, dark brown mud and water sliding down her face. " _Why_?" she demanded and Armonie walked back toward her. The blue and pink streaks in her hair were now brown and the strands that had torn free from her braid were plastered to her face.

Still laughing, Armonie offered her a hand, letting go when she felt Amina try to _yank_ her into the mud puddle. "You gotta be better than _that_ ," she informed her daughter, backing up a few paces. "For that, I _won't_ help you up."

Her daughter groaned, splashing at her with muddy water as she wiggled her legs in the mire. "I'm _stuck_ ," she grumbled. "Help? _Please?_ "

Laughing, Armonie approached again. "Don't try to drag me in there with you," she warned playfully and offered her hand again. "Come on; enough lazing around."

"Lazing," Amina grumbled but took her hand and allowed her mother to help her to her feet. " _Lazing?_ Angelo is _lazing_!"

Armonie hip-checked her. "Yes, but you're _also_ not running right now!" she pointed off, taking off at a light jog, keeping to the edges of the path where the ground was firmer.

"Don't call me _lazy!_ " Amina continued, jogging after her.

They fell back into companionable silence, broken only by the occasional profanity and the sound of their panting breaths and feet hitting the ground. Amina took after her example, treading where the tree roots lay, on much more solid ground than the soupy mire that their running path had become.

The longer they ran, the quieter the forest became. Finally, when the sun was beginning to clear the horizon, Amina called for a break, as she suspected that they were headed closer to the area of forest that the meteorite landed.

They walked in companionable silence as the morning fog grew thicker. Automatically, Armonie jumped across the path so that she could walk close to her daughter, close enough to her that their hands and shoulders brushed every few steps.

As they approached the area that Amina's meteorite crashed, they began to notice a stale-smoke smell. "Forest must have burned," Armonie muttered, using one arm to cover her face though bare flesh did little to mask the heavy scent.

The further they traveled, the warmer the air got until the sweat on their bodies had nothing to do with their run. "Good thing we didn't come earlier," Amina said halfheartedly, reaching out to grab her mother's waistband. Growing up, she had learned quickly not to grab Armonie's legs or arms so her mother wouldn't feel impeded if she needed to move quickly; it was yet another thing that Angelo hadn't learned.

It was something she knew that cemented herself in Armonie's mind as her "favorite"...even if she knew that she shouldn't label her twin children as "favorite" and "slightly-less-out-of-favor".

The trees were split and broken up ahead, still steaming faintly in the cool dawn air. The further they traveled, the lower the scars became until they found the meters-long tear in the ground.

" _Wow_ ," Amina breathed, letting go of her mother to walk toward the crater. "You seeing this?"

"I'm not blind," Armonie replied dryly. "Be careful," she added when she saw that the teen was walking toward the wide swath of torn earth.

Amina smiled at her mother over her shoulder and carefully picked her way lower. It had been hours since she and Angelo had seen the meteor crash, but the ground still steamed faintly in the cool air.

"Be careful," Armonie said again as Amina descended into the crater.

Amina waved the hand that wasn't bracing herself over her head absently. "The ground's still warm!" she added over her shoulder.

"I suppose it would have been really hot when your meteor landed," Armonie said thoughtfully, edging along the long scar in the ground. "Maybe it broke up when it landed?"

Her daughter hummed in agreement, reaching the bottom of the crater and beginning to walk along it. "Whatever it was, it was _big_."

"Odd that we didn't feel anything," Armonie murmured, one eye on the ground in front of her – dry now from the heat of the meteor – and one on her daughter's stumbling path a few feet below her. It was a shallow rift, enough that at the very center at its deepest, it only came up to Amina's waist. Further down its long path of destruction it got deeper, but Armonie thought it couldn't be that far over Amina's head – perhaps only a few centimeters. "You'd think with something this big that fell for so long…"

Amina's smile turned wicked and she glanced at her mother. "Well, maybe _you_ , didn't…I'm sure _Vati_ kept you plenty distracted."

That earned a startled laugh from Armonie. "That is why you're my favorite," she teased. She was careful not to confirm or deny her daughter's jest, even when she winked a dark brown eye at her suggestively. "Angelo wouldn't dare say anything so bold."

"That's why he has me," Amina said cheerfully. "Brains and brawn. Our own _dynamic duo!_ "

Armonie laughed again. "Batman and Robin?" she asked. "Extra points for the English."

"That's how Angelo learns," Amina told her with a shrug. "That's why he's on his computer all the time."

Her mother snorted. "I thought he was just looking at porn."

They shared a laugh at that as they carefully picked along the crater. At its very end, a man sat, letting his legs dangle over the edge; Armonie and Amina stopped.

" _Howdy_ ," the man said and Amina edged closer to Armonie. " _You lot speak English?_ "

Amina glanced at her mother, moving as close as she was able to without unbalancing herself on the curling edges of the crater. Armonie frowned and shook her head and Amina said nothing, taking her cue from her mother. Both were privately glad that they had left Agostino and Angelo behind for the run, not that they would wake up so early – they would have immediately replied, ignorant of the potential danger.

The man wasn't deterred. " _'Dynamic duo'?_ " he pressed, pointing at the two of them. So he had heard them talking. He frowned when neither of them said anything else, watching him carefully.

"I don't like this," Amina muttered to her mother, voice little more than a whisper.

Armonie didn't respond to her daughter. "Do you speak Italian?"

She was only a little reassured when she saw the blank look on the man's face. He looked like a hunter and she didn't like the possessive way he gripped the rim of the crater. " _Now come on,_ " he said. Armonie couldn't quite place his accent, but it made his o's sound more like " _ahr_ ", making it harder to understand him. " _Don't give me that jabber. You gotta speak English, right?_ "

"I hope I never go to America," Amina muttered under her breath.

"Hush," Armonie hissed just as quietly. "Back up. Get ready to run…and get out of the crater." Amina grunted her assent and began backing up.

The man slid off the lip of the crater, revealing the shotgun he had been hiding behind him. Armonie had seen it, though, in the little glint of light on the metal and the way the barrel had pressed into the soft grass. He swayed drunkenly and Armonie tried not to sigh out loud. " _Now, there,_ " he said, dragging the weapon along by the butt so that it dragged along the dried dirt at the bottom of the crater. " _I ain't gonna hur'cha_."

They kept backing up, careful not to trip as they moved and Armonie could see that Amina was shifting her attention between the terrain, the drunken hunter, and the edge of the crater. Armonie remembered seeing a dip on the other side, probably caused by a small creek that the meteor that had cut through.

All three of them froze when they heard raised voices. " _Yah!_ " the man in front of them said. " _O'er here! I go' some'in'_."

It irked Armonie on a personal level to hear the man's accent change constantly. She motioned with her hand to Amina to keep moving when the man turned with jerky motions toward the other end of the crater. When her daughter started moving quickly, quietly, Armonie began moving too. She wanted as much distance between Amina and the man as possible.

Seeing that Amina had reached the dip in the edge of the crater, she nodded tersely. Nimble as a goat, Amina grabbed the exposed edges of the roots and vaulted out, splashing through a shallow puddle of water.

At the sudden noise, the man spun around, nearly falling over as drunken vertigo hit from the sudden motion. He stumbled and tried to raise the gun; even if Armonie hadn't flung a fist-sized rock at his shoulder, he would have failed as his hands fumbled limply along the gun. The man howled in pain.

" _Run!_ " Armonie snapped to Amina. The teen straightened and took off, hurdling nimbly over a fallen tree and disappearing quickly into the underbrush.

The man flopped around on the ground, having fallen at some point as he struggled with his shoulder and the shotgun. Seeing that he was only writhing around, too distracted by his shoulder to pay her any mind, Armonie turned and ran.

She caught up to Amina near the running path and both could hear raised voices behind them. Above them all was the drunk hunter's cry, " _Th' damn bitch_ hit _me!_ "

"Nice shot," Amina whispered to her mother, panting. Her eyes were wide with adrenaline but she wasn't sweating.

Armonie grunted. "Come on; we need to move!" Over the sound of their feet slapping the ground, Armonie could hear a distant buzz. "Dirt bikes," she muttered to Amina when her daughter made a questioning noise. "Off the path."

It had taken them nearly twenty minutes to reach the crater at a jog but even running much faster, they wouldn't make it back to their property before the dirt bikes caught up to them. Armonie clicked her tongue at Amina and was pleased that she wheeled smoothly off the path after her. They ducked under trees and around bushes, careful of the mud, made even more treacherous by exposed roots.

Behind them, Armonie could hear the men on the dirt bikes whooping as they chased after them. "How's _this_ for a workout?" Armonie asked her daughter, who huffed, unable to respond. She gestured to the tight copse of trees nearby and they wheeled into it, dodging clinging bushes and brambles but knowing that it would be worse for the dirt bikes chasing them.

They paused at the edge of a small ravine for a quick breather, Amina leaning her hands on her knees as she fought to catch her breath. A quick glance at her watch told Armonie that it was barely 6:00. Still plenty of time to get back home, shower, and get the kids to school.

Behind them, she could hear the drone of the dirt bikes. With the wet ground, it would be easy to track them even if it was difficult for them to follow their path. Armonie knew that it would only be a matter of time.

Armonie turned to her daughter, who looked at her with such trust. "Been here before?" Amina nodded, still panting. "The cave." Amina nodded, sucked in another deep breath and sat at the very edge of the ravine. Gripping the edge with her hands, stronger and more calloused than Angelo's Armonie knew, and pushed herself off.

If it had been Angelo, he would have argued; Agostino would have most certainly given them away back at the crater and now they would be dead...or worse. Armonie loved and hated Amina's blind trust in her as she watched her daughter's fingers, dirty from the dirt and mud she had dragged herself through disappear from the edge of the ravine. She continued to stare at the spot on dirt and rock where her oldest child's hands had just been when the dirt bikes roared out of the trees.

" _Well, look-ee here,_ " one of the riders said in English and Amina resisted the urge to comment on it since she wasn't supposed to understand English. " _What a pretty little lady_."

It seemed that the first man that spoke had the same abhorrent accent as the one she had thrown a rock at. She fought against the urge to bare her teeth and tell him how much of a lady she was _not_. It didn't matter; if they tried to hurt her daughter or her family, they would soon learn.

She resisted the urge to reach for her knives. Even though it had been over a decade and a half since she had been in the military, they were always on her body. Old habits died hard and it was a Ben-David trait to face danger head-on with their teeth bared.

" _You hit our friend,_ " the first man man said and Armonie let her eyes fan over them. Three dirt bikes, four people; the hunter from before wasn't present, but there were four guns that she could see, more likely at least one more.

" _She doesn't speak English,_ " a second rider rider muttered in English.

One of the men riding double snorted. He leaned against the handlebars while the fourth man draped himself casually over his back and shoulders as if he wasn't at all bothered by the turn of events.

The second man, who looked to be part Italian, shrugged. " _It's not unusual,_ " he muttered. " _Rural people like this probably haven't seen a school._ "

" _Barbaric,_ " the third biker said, spitting on the ground; the one sitting pillion to him slapped him upside the head.

Armonie said nothing about her skills as a linguist, much more content to let them think she didn't speak English. " _Well get to translating, then,_ " the first man said. " _Tell her we don't mean her harm._ "

"I'm sorry for my friends," the translator told Armonie in rough Italian. She peered at him; he probably learned early but didn't practice that often. Why he was serving at a translator she could never guess. "They say they don't mean you any harm?"

Armonie frowned. "And what do _you_ say?" she asked, adding an accent to her Italian. Let it confuse him.

" _What did she say?_ " the first biker demanded.

The translator rubbed the back of his neck as he thought, making a rude American gesture at the first man. "I don't understand," he complained.

"If _they_ say that they mean me no harm, what do _you_ say?" Armonie demanded. "They may be saying one thing but you may be saying something else. Which is it?"

The man scowled. " _We_ mean you no harm," he said, becoming annoyed.

"Did your friend back there mean us harm too?" Armonie asked, frowning. "Or did he mean to accidentally shoot us? If you meant us harm, then why did you chase us?"

"Why did you run?" the translator snapped back and Armonie knew she had him. He was easily agitated and that he ignored his friends was making _them_ annoyed in turn.

The first man scowled. " _What did she say?_ " he demanded sharply.

" _Sounds like she had a lot to say,_ " the fourth man said mildly. He seemed entirely bored with the conversation and Armonie resolved to keep a close eye on him.

The translator spat. " _She thinks she's being smart,_ " he grumbled. " _Italian bitch. She was asking about Frank. She said that if_ we _mean her no harm, then what about him?_ "

" _That lecher,_ " the fourth man said, lips twisting in disgust. " _No wonder they hit him._ "

" _That's still assault_ ," the third grumbled, toying with his gun. " _They're not properly dressed for hunting either._ "

Armonie bit back a response and forced back a reaction. She wanted to scream that this was private property, the land and park owned by the Scordato family; no hunting was authorized and nothing was in season anyway. But, she had to give them credit that these men at least appeared to be prepared for it, wearing camouflage clothes and hunting vests to prevent accidental shots. Intentional shots were an entirely different story.

" _You do_ not _want to take this to court, dude,_ " the translator told him. His eyes were shifty and only the fourth man seemed to catch this; he said nothing, frowning deeply and leaning against the third man's back.

The first man grunted. " _Ask her what she was doing here. And where the other one is._ "

"Ahh," the translator said, rubbing the back of his head again. "They're curious about what you're doing here and where your friend is."

"That's a lot of talk for a simple question," Armonie said.

The man turned red in the face and jabbed a finger at his gun. "I will _end_ you, _bitch_ ," he said, lapsing into English.

Armonie pretended not to understand even if the meaning was entirely clear. "I don't understand," she replied levelly.

" _Kill!_ " the translator yelled in English, so red in the face that she wondered briefly if his head would explode. " _Kill! You understand, you miserable shit?_ Hunt! We will hunt you!" by the end he seemed to have gathered himself enough to speak Italian; his friends stared at him. " _Bitch is being difficult_." He said defensively.

" _I think she's just confused,_ " the fourth man drawled. " _I knew you were shit at Italian, Jimmy._ "

The translator, Jimmy, whirled around and jabbed a finger at the fourth man. Even if they meant her harm, Armonie was starting to warm, just a little, to the fourth man who remained draped over the third's back as if entirely unconcerned. " _I'd like to see_ you _do better!_ "

" _This is dumb,_ " the third man said and Armonie saw him affectionately pat the fourth man's arms where they were wrapped around his waist. " _Did you even ask her?_ "

Jimmy opened his mouth but closed it immediately at the _look_ the first man gave him. He turned back to Armonie. "What are you doing here and where is the other one?"

"I don't take kindly to being threatened with guns," Armonie replied, letting a hint of ice creep into her eyes and voice. "And I am well within my rights to be here without being questioned."

The man looked even angrier. "This property is owned," he tried and it was very clear to Armonie that his grasp of Italian wasn't the best. "And it is time to hunt."

"It is private property," Armonie replied with slight emphasis on the words that made Jimmy's teeth grind. "And hunting is not allowed here."

" _What is she saying_?" the first man asked when Jimmy fell silent in fury.

" _She said that she doesn't like guns,_ " the man snapped.

The third man snorted; the fourth rolled his eyes. " _Then maybe you shouldn't have threatened to kill her._ "

Jimmy spat on the ground. " _She says this is_ private property," he added, butchering the Italian words, making Armonie frown. " _And hunting isn't allowed._ "

" _Maybe you shouldn't have told her we were going hunting,_ " the first man drawled.

" _Fuck you, Bill,_ " Jimmy snapped.

At the same time, the fourth man muttered, " _I think it's pretty obvious we're hunting here._ "

" _I'd like to see you do better,_ " Jimmy roared, flailing his arms in the air in fury.

" _You suck at this,_ " the fourth man said and he was quickly becoming Armonie's favorite.

The third man grunted. He seemed to be a man of few words, which Armonie could appreciate. " _You do,_ " he agreed. " _How did_ you _end up being the translator?_ "

Like a child throwing a tantrum, Jimmy stomped his foot. " _Because it was_ my _family that lives nearby_." That explained a lot. " _It was_ me _that got us a place to stay here. It was_ me _that found us a place to hunt, okay? Because I_ fucking speak Italian."

Armonie resisted the urge to correct his grammar and to let him know that she agreed with the fourth man; his Italian was shit. Maybe later, after she had them arrested or fined (she wasn't sure which she wanted, just yet) she would inform them all.

Assuming, of course, she wasn't shot. But she was sure that Amina, should she be able to escape, would probably also tell them about their abhorrent grasp of Italian. In that, Armonie was reassured.

" _Clearly not well,_ " the fourth man said when he was done and Jimmy gave an inarticulate sound of rage in response.

The third man sighed. " _Okay, Jimmy,_ " he said. " _Just tell her this: we're concerned that the other one will be shot if they're running around the woods. There's other groups out there hunting._ "

Grinding his teeth, Jimmy haltingly translated. Armonie debated playing dumb and making him repeat himself but she wasn't ready to push him too hard. "Hunting isn't allowed," Armonie repeated. Actually, she wasn't entirely sure if the rest of the property allowed it. In the past Agostino hadn't signed off on it especially given that they had young children at the house; if he signed off on it this year, she would kill him because she was sure that he would have gone about it wrong given that he hadn't talked to her about it. Regardless, this was far too close to their property for hunting, something she was sure she was within her rights for fining them for.

" _Offer to show her our hunting permit,_ " the third man said, crossing his arms over his chest.

" _We don't_ have _one,_ " Jimmy hissed back. " _What if she says 'yes'?_ "

" _Then we tell her that our permit is at our campsite,_ " the man replied. " _If she wants to see it, she has to come back with us._ "

Armonie sat through Jimmy haltingly translating the first offer, calling it a _hunting-paper-official_. When she agreed to see their permit, he butchered the suggested statement that it was at their campsite ( _tent-car-place_ ). She asked him to clarify, trying not to laugh when it was clear that he only knew certain kinds of Italian. _Place-temporary-tent car-park_ , he suggested and she tried not to laugh.

"Campsite," Armonie corrected.

Jimmy clenched his fists. "Yes," he agreed through gritted teeth. "Campsite."

"By law you are required to carry a copy of your hunting permit – hunting-paper-official," she added mockingly though her tone remained innocent. "Why do you not do this?"

" _She says that we're supposed to be carrying it with us,_ " Jimmy growled.

The third man leaned forward, dislodging the comfortable sprawl of the man on his back. " _Ask her for her name._ "

Jimmy translated this quickly – it was obvious he was much better at this than anything else. It still came out weird, though. Armonie toyed with which name to give. Surname? Maiden name? Her birth name or the one on her official documents? "Armonie," she said at last.

The third man leaned forward again. " _Armonie_?" he pressed. She shook her head at him. " _Well, Armonie,_ " he said with a meaningful glance at Jimmy. " _I'm Paul and this here is Chris._ " He gestured to the man draped lazily over his back. Chris waved lazily, untangling his fingers where they were wrapped around his waist. " _That there is Bill, and your translator is Jimmy._ "

They all paused while Jimmy translated. "Pleasure," Armonie said shortly when Paul looked at her meaningfully.

" _You threw a rock at our friend, Frank,_ " Paul added. " _Why?_ "

Armonie snorted as soon as Jimmy was done translating. It worked out much better when someone clearly had a plan for the conversation. "He was lecherous _._ "

When Jimmy translated that sourly, Bill and Paul threw their heads back and laughed; Chris looked perturbed to have been disturbed by his pillow's sudden motion.

Why he knew " _lecherous_ " in Italian when he didn't know " _campsite_ " made her very concerned.

" _Ask her why she ran,_ " Bill muttered. He had an accent much like Frank's but somehow was easier to understand despite the scraggle of beard clinging to his lips and chin.

Armonie scowled when Jimmy translated. "A lecherous man dragging his gun around, stumbling drunk toward me? Why _wouldn't_ I run?"

It took a moment for Jimmy to piece that together. He settled on, " _Frank was lecherous and drunk. He had a gun._ "

" _He's attached to that damn thing_ ," Bill grumbled into his beard when Jimmy finished translating for Armonie. " _It's not healthy –_ don't translate that!" he snapped when Jimmy opened his mouth.

Chris grunted. " _If he's so attached to it, why does he keep dragging it around the way he does? He's a walking safety hazard._ "

 _Thank you_ , Armonie thought. No one that loves guns (singular or plural) would drag it around the way the drunkard did; no one with any intelligence would swing it so carelessly.

" _Ask her about the meteor_ ," Chris said.

" _I don't know that word,_ " Jimmy grumbled, a blush staining his cheeks.

Paul grunted. " _Just describe it._ " When Armonie glanced at him, he made a cupping motion with his hands. Then he laid one hand flat and made a fist with the other; he hit his flat palm with his fist to mime the meteor crash.

"He wants to know if you know anything about that," Jimmy added.

Armonie snorted. "Rocks fall all the time." She told him.

" _She says that rocks fall all the time,_ " Jimmy said after a moment to translate. " _I don't believe her, guys._ "

It was only her military training that kept her eyes resting on them when she saw the trees move. She kept the movement of the taller branches in her peripherals while she watched Jimmy stomp up to his dirt bike and release the catches that held his rifle in place.

" _What are you doing?_ " Paul demanded and Chris seemed more alert, sitting up in his seat.

" _Jimmy,_ " Bill said warningly and Jimmy turned to him, pointing the muzzle of his gun downward as he did so.

Jimmy jabbed a finger toward his friends. " _You don't get it, do you? Do you know how much a meteorite_ costs? _Did you see how big that crater is? We could make a fortune._ " When he turned to raise the rifle up, he only used one hand; it dipped and he brought his other hand back and braced himself just in front of Armonie. "Where is rock?" he demanded. When Armonie didn't answer, he took a shuffling step forward and yelled his question again.

" _Too close,_ " she informed him very quietly in English and pushed the barrel away, shoving herself into his space. _One-two-three_ hard hits to the gut, a sweep of her legs against his hip and a shove against his gut had him falling.

As he fell, she wrenched the rifle out of his hands and settled it against her shoulder; she kept the muzzle pointed down in case his friends didn't want to avenge their retching friend. Only Chris was looking at him; Billy and Paul were staring up at the trees where _something_ stood staring down at them.

A branch snapped, a tree groaned, and another dark head appeared over the shoulder of the first. They stood as tall as the trees and seemed to be made of many small overlapping plates of metal. Both had two blue lights set in what appeared to be a head, surrounded by thin frames of metal that emulated eyes; they blinked and whirred as they seemed to bring them into focus. The air was filled with minute rattles and clicks as the machinery in their bodies shifted.

How the _hell_ mechanical beings like that could move so silently through the forest, Armonie would never know. She took a careful step back, wary of the approaching edge of the ravine. Below her, Amina gently tapped a rock against the ground as if to remind her that she was still there.

Swearing, Bill lunged for his bike and reached for the rifle strapped there. One of the mechanical beings leaped forward, shaking the ground as he landed. With the sound of metal crashing together it shifted its arm from a three-fingered two-thumbed hand into what looked like some kind of cannon.

The men scattered. Chris clung to Paul like a burr while he kicked the bike into ignition and zipped away and swearing. Bill tucked his shotgun over his lap while he started his bike and riding over, slung Jimmy over the front. Without a glance at Armonie, he took off.

She didn't have time to think, readjusting her attention – and the butt of her stolen gun – to the mechanical things. The one that had crouched slowly stood up, its arm shifting back into a hand. With a final glance at her, they turned and walked away.

Armonie swore under her breath. Aside from the distant crackles and snaps of branches hitting their metal carapaces, they were remarkably silent; their segmented feet, which reminded Armonie of the bones and tendons of the human foot, split around roots and obstructions, causing surprisingly little damage to the forest ground aside from the sucking of the clinging mud.

When the forest was silent for a while and she could no longer see the dark, hulking shapes of them, Armonie turned to find her daughter.

"I'm glad it was you and not Angelo," she admitted, offering a hand that shook minutely to Amina. She wiggled out of the cave she had been hiding in, propped herself up on the ledge, and took her mother's offered hand. "I don't think he could have been that quiet for so long."

Amina laughed, hauling herself up with Armonie's help. "I don't think he would have fit in the cave. It's smaller than I remember it."

"Maybe you just got bigger," Armonie teased, tapping her lightly on the nose. She missed, her hands were shaking so bad.

Her daughter grabbed her wrists. "What happened?" she asked.

Armonie shook her head. "Damn Americans just posturing," she said. "Knocked one on his ass – got myself a souvenir…well, _two_ souvenirs." She nodded at the abandoned dirt bike. "We should ride that back – it's getting late."

It took almost nothing to start the bike and soon with Amina riding pillion, they zipped away toward home. "What _else_ happened, _Ima_?" Amina asked quietly as they rode. "I could feel the ground shaking…and then I heard them run away."

For a moment, Armonie considered telling her daughter – especially how her insides felt frozen and liquefied all at once at the _stare_ of the creatures. Instead she decided not to burden her daughter. "Nothing," she lied.

"Okay," Amina said easily, looping her arms around her mother's waist as they cut across the field toward home. "You don't have to tell me."

Armonie patted her arm in silent thanks. She parked the bike near the back shed and after removing the rounds and magazine, propped the gun up beside it. Later when fury wasn't simmering beneath her veins, she would set about finding the owners, returning their gear, and giving them a piece of her mind.

Behind her, Amina grimaced. "I'm _filthy_ ," she said a little shakily.

"Go take a hot bath," Armonie suggested. "Before your brother wakes up and steals it."

Amina pointed to one of the windows; it was already fogged over. "He's already in there," she complained.

"Go in mine," Armonie told her daughter with a gentle nudge. "If Agostino complains, tell him I sent you."

Rolling her eyes, Amina obeyed, cutting through the back stairs. Hearing her husband in the kitchen, Armonie poked her head in. It was unusual that Agostino woke up so early, much less was out of bed and functioning and she was curious.

She caught him as he was pulling an ice pack out of the freezer. "Ah," he said, shuffling the cold pack between his hands. "Perfect timing!" then he frowned, his dark brows almost meeting. "You're _filthy_."

"Did you knock your head on the door again?" Armonie teased, leaning to kiss his cheek.

Agostino leaned back. "You're _filthy_ ," he repeated. "We have guests." He looked over her critically. "Go wash up," he insisted. "We have guests and they're hurt."

Armonie's eyes narrowed at him. "Why do we have guests so early? What were they doing on our property?" Taking the ice pack from her husband, she wrapped it with a dishcloth (ignoring Agostino's quiet protests that she would make the towel dirty) and poked her head into the living room. She turned to Agostino. "Explain. Now."

"They knocked on our door," Agostino told her urgently. "One of them is hurt. They don't speak Italian very well."

Turning to face her husband, she jabbed a finger at the suddenly-quiet men. "They were _hunting._ Hunting is not allowed."

"I signed off on it," Agostino assured her. "They're entirely within their rights."

Armonie threw the ice pack at Chris who caught it and dropped it on Jimmy's abdomen; the man groaned. "No, they're _not_ ," she snapped. "Nothing is in season right now and by law they're supposed to have their permit on them."

"They said they left it at their campsite," Agostino told her. "I don't understand what the problem is."

"The _problem_ is that they were on private property with neither hunting nor camping licenses and _they threatened us with guns_." She jabbed a finger at Jimmy. "He threatened to _hunt_ me after they _chased us on dirt bikes_ and you didn't think to warn us that you signed off on _hunting along the paths we run_? You _know_ where we run every morning."

Jimmy groaned on the ground. " _Will one of you call an ambulance?_ " Paul wondered though he didn't sound like he cared either way. He quailed a little under Armonie's glare. " _Uh…_ police? Ambulance?"

" _No,_ " Armonie informed them flatly in English. " _I didn't rupture any organs – he's just bruised and pissy because his pride was hurt_."

Agostino, whose English wasn't very good, smiled at them – he obviously didn't understand what she had told them. " _My wife is good at English, yes? She is help you._ "

" _I will call the police because I don't take kindly to being threatened_ to be shot _on my own property,_ " Armonie added. She turned back to Agostino. "This discussion is not over," she informed him when she saw him backing away. "We're going to have a long and serious discussion about your sudden choice in opening our property to hunters out of season."

The man glared at her. "Woman, why can't you just do as I say?" he snapped.

"When have I ever been mindlessly obedient to you?" Armonie demanded. "And if you give me that bullshit about this being _your family's property_ not _ours_ again, our talk will be taken to court. I am well within my right to be concerned about my safety and the safety of my children – we could have been shot by them and one of them was definitely _drunk_. _And he had a gun_." She paused and looked back at the group. " _Where is your lecher friend, Frank? Surely you didn't leave him in the forest?_ " Their shame-faced looks were her only answer and she sighed, feeling a headache coming on.

"I don't have time for this," Agostino whined. "I need to get ready."

Armonie waited until he was nearly down the hall to tell him, "Amina is in our shower." She turned around to survey the four Americans as Agostino swore. When he quieted, she added, "You're taking them in to school as well if I'm supposed to 'take care of them' as you demand, o great husband of mine."

" _We'll ride our bikes in_ ," Angelo yelled down the stairs in Spanish.

" _Then you two better leave soon or you will be late,_ " Armonie yelled back in the same language. " _Make sure your sister is ready, too._ "

" _Jesus_ ," Bill muttered with feeling. " _How many languages do you_ speak?"

Clearly he hadn't meant for her to hear that, judging by the way he jumped when she looked back at him. " _Four fluently, two with comfortable working proficiency, one with conversational proficiency._ " She informed him flatly. " _So next time, watch who you call an uneducated barbarian._ " Paul flushed in embarrassment.

" _You bitch,_ " Jimmy muttered from where he lay groaning.

" _Your Italian is shit, by the way._ " Armonie informed him. " _Whoever taught you should be shot though I suspect that even if you had the best teacher in the world you're just a shit student._ " She crossed her arms across her chest and drummed her fingers on her elbow and shook her head.

A door slammed upstairs. " _I'm almost ready,_ " Amina yelled in German; half a heartbeat later Angelo said the same thing in Spanish.

"Why can't you both speak Italian?" Agostino roared.

Angelo thundered down the stairs, dressed for school; the duffel bag for football practice was slung across his shoulders. He glanced at Armonie and made a face at the mud and sweat streaking her skin. " _I think we made him angry,_ " he said with an impish grin, still in Spanish. " _Amina is almost ready; I will wait for her outside._ " He pecked her on the cheek, tall enough that he had to bend slightly. She was sure that he wasn't done growing and almost dreaded when he would tower over her like her husband did.

A few minutes later, Amina followed, her hair still wet from her shower. She kissed her mother on the cheek, made a rude gesture at the Americans, and ran out the door after her brother.

" _So this is your family,_ " Chris said awkwardly.

" _My children,_ " she said, nodding after the twins. " _My idiot husband._ "

They fell silent, none of them knowing what to say. " _Look,_ " Bill began and Armonie held up a hand.

" _I don't want to hear it,_ " she informed him. " _I will not press charges for you threatening me on my own property._ " She gave a pointed look at Jimmy who continued to groan. " _I_ will _call an ambulance so you can get checked up and I_ will _call the police and let them know that there may be hunters out. I don't care if your statement that there are other groups of hunters out there or not; nothing is in season now and your range was far too close to my property for me to be at all comfortable._ "

They all looked down in embarrassment. Jimmy opened his mouth to say something but Chris nudged him in the shoulder and he closed his mouth sulkily.

She nudged Jimmy with the point of a shoe. " _I didn't rupture any organs,_ " she informed him. " _I didn't hit you nearly hard enough for that._ "

" _Bitch,_ " Jimmy wheezed. " _What do you know?_ "

Armonie knelt. " _Before I moved here, I was in the Israeli Defense Forces_ ," she informed him. " _I've killed people for less than what you've done to me. I know how hard to hit._ " She stood and dug in the pouch of her running belt for her phone.

Her friend in the police force answered groggily. " _It must be serious if you're calling me,_ " he grumbled good-naturedly.

"Just had a few issues pop up on my property. Think you can swing by? My idiot husband signed off on hunting permits."

The man groaned. " _That man,_ " he muttered like an expletive. " _Alright, I'll be over in a bit. Do I need to bring the_ paddy wagon _?_ " he liked the American phrase and had worked with Armonie to be able to say it clearly; it had quickly become a joke among his station and he had been given the nickname 'Paddy'.

"You can always call for it later," Armonie promised. "We might need a medic too. I may have…convinced one of them not to mess with me."

Paddy gave a long sigh over the phone. She could hear him starting the car in the background. " _I can tell this will be an interesting story but I hope it doesn't have a lot of paperwork attached._ "

Armonie shrugged even though he couldn't see here. "You can determine that when you get here."

" _I texted one of the EMTs we have on duty,_ " Paddy said. " _Be there in ten._ "

Putting the phone down, Armonie looked over her shame-faced guests. "You eat yet this morning?" She sighed when they shook their heads, swearing to herself in Ivrit.

When Agostino came downstairs, dressed smartly in his suit for a meeting in town, Bill sat with Jimmy while Chris and Paul made omelets; Armonie sat at the dining room table where she could watch them, sipping from a mug of tea.

"What is this?" Agostino demanded. "You're still so messy and our guests are _cooking_?"

"Paddy's on his way," Armonie replied. "And I'm not letting them out of my sight."

Agostino sighed deeply. "With you as a role model, our daughter will never find a good husband," he threatened.

"Then maybe she'll find a strong wife like you did," Armonie told him sharply; her husband looked scandalized. "Nevermind my appearance; worry more about the people that threatened your sweet daughter. I'm not letting them out of my sight."

Her husband scowled at her. "I can't find our children anywhere," he complained. "I thought I was supposed to take them to school?"

"They're riding their bikes," Armonie replied and he glared at her. "If you took _any_ interest in their schoolwork, you would know this." It was a recurring argument with them: Armonie was a language savant; Agostino was not and didn't aspire to be fluent in any language other than his beloved Italian. "Think of it this way: now you'll be on time for once." Another disagreement between them: Agostino, unlike the rest of his family, was almost never on time.

"Why are you so disagreeable?" Agostino complained. "What happened to my lovely wife?"

Armonie snorted, crossing her legs primly despite the drying mud still stuck to her legs. "I was never really lovely."

"Like a prickly cactus," Agostino teased but there was only affection in his honey-colored eyes. He leaned down as if to kiss her cheek, wrinkled his nose and seemed to think better of it.

She flapped her hand at him. "Go on, Cigar Man," she teased. "Before you're late… _again_." Shaking his head at her, he obeyed.

* * *

 ** _Ima_ : "mother" in Hebrew/Ivrit**

 ** _Neshama_ : "soul"; (slang) "darling" in Hebrew/Ivrit**

 ** _Vati_ : "daddy" in German. Amina had taken to calling her father that - she's learning German in high school and learning that her father doesn't speak German (but her mother learned to practice with her), does it to annoy him.**


	3. Chapter 2

**Also posted on Archive of Our Own under the pseudonym Dracoduceus.**

* * *

Mutt picked up the thread of the story when Armonie paused as if for breath. She downed her glass and accepted a refill from Kent.

He and Jack had gotten separated from their group. Approximate translations of their names were given but they were beyond Jordan's ability to remember without meeting them herself. There were two others in his group that were roughly the same age as he was, twins like Angelo and Amina.

During a Decepticon attack on a nearby (relatively) asteroid field, he and Jack managed to pack the twins into protoform stasis and allow them to escape. They weren't sure of the status of the rest of their unit, which had consisted of other veteran warriors and a handful of other younglings.

Jordan was surprised to learn that Prowl had been in the squad with them.

"I guess I can estimate it to be around two thousand Earth years ago," Kent admitted. "The attack, I mean. They called it the Battle of Sa-Rannah, an asteroid toward Junkion."

Mutt sighed from beneath the table. "The Planet of Junk! I'd forgotten about that place." He wiggled and shifted fluidly into Hot Rod, choosing a seat beside Armonie; he scooted his chair closer so that their shoulders and knees brushed. "It's an entire planet just made of junk and detritus."

"Imagine that," Armonie murmured, putting her chin on her synthetic hand and the same elbow on the table. "What kind of junk?"

"All kinds," Hot Rod told her. Though his face remained expressionless, his voice and hands gestured wildly in excitement. "Mostly things from crashes…mostly metal; Junkion is closer to our region of space than yours."

Jordan tried to imagine an entire planet made of garbage. "That can't be a good thing."

"Not really," Kent admitted. "The Junkions tended to be raiders and brigands though it was a good place to lie low and scavenge for parts."

"Our CO nearly died there," Hot Rod added. He added their CO's name in Cybertronian, as if that would mean anything to either woman. "But the Junkions there were nice and helped us put him back together. We were really fortunate to meet them."

Armonie reached over with her flesh hand and patted the back of his neck; Hot Rod looked pleased. "It sounds like it," she told him. "What happened during the attack?"

"Well, we left Junkion after fixing up our CO and refueling when we got a distress signal from further than we were authorized to go without direct approval from the Prime – that is, Optimus Prime," Hot Rod explained. "Then we realized that it was a distress signal from another ship we recognized, that we knew that Optimus was on."

Kent snorted inelegantly. "There was a lot of arguing on the ship. Our commanding officer was not so inclined to follow an empty lead and would have succeeded in steering us away from deeper space had Prime's…ah… wife not been on board." After a moment of hesitation, he said her name in Cybertronian.

"We'll go with 'Ariel'," Armonie said gently; Jordan thought that the ending trill sounded similar to that name. "So Ariel argued."

Hot Rod and Kent laughed loudly, startling them both. "That's an understatement," Kent told them. "She fought – physically, even. Kept insisting that she knew something was wrong and that we needed to follow the signal."

"Mags did the right thing; at least he tried to," Hot Rod said, leaning into Armonie's gentle hand. "He knew that we would be too far out of our designated zone for backup – it would be too dangerous – but all of us hot shot younglings that thought that we could take on the whole Decepticon Army ourselves were gung-ho for it. Somehow we ended up going, Mags and a bunch of the veterans protesting the whole time. Still, we went." Hot Rod ran his fingers over the grain of the dining room table. "As you can expect it was a bloodbath. We were attacked near Sha-Rannah – the Decepticons had expected us. Not too far away, at Tyger-Pax, the Decepticons ambushed Prime and the others."

Seeing their blank looks, Kent and Hot Rod glanced at each other. "It started long before that," Jazz said, popping into the kitchen. A moment later, Katie opened the door and walked in, trailing mud behind her. "Back on Cybertron and before."

"Yeah," Katie grumbled though Jordan hadn't said anything. "Sorry. I'll clean it up." She wrestled herself out of her muddy boots, sidestepping the clods of dirt and mud and reached for the Swiffer Jordan now kept propped next to the front door.

Hound appeared behind her and helped her with the larger chunks of mud, chucking them out the front door into the rain. "The plus side of this not being my real body," he said cheerfully, dusting his hands needlessly before closing the door.

Jazz ducked into the kitchen and opened the door. "There's some stew on the stove," Jordan called and he waved over his head, checking the saucepan. "Not sure how much, though," she added.

"I'll take anything," Katie said with feeling. "It's such a shitty day."

One of the strangest things of living with her was definitely her accent, Jordan had long since decided. It wasn't so strong that it was difficult to understand her, but it seemed to manifest itself in odd ways. Most days it sounded like she had a swollen tongue or puffy lip; some days it was worse and it all depended on the settings of her implants.

Other than that, Katie and Jazz were fine houseguests. They were quiet and cleaned up after themselves, even though Katie came home with mud and…other stuff coating her boots more often than not. The other plus was that since Jazz's undercarriage was too low for him to follow her to all of her appointments, Hound drove and guarded her, so he visited often.

And where Hound went, Raoul followed. She still wasn't sure exactly what their relationship was since they seemed practically joined at the hip, but it wasn't like she strictly needed to know. In any case she didn't mind because she liked Raoul's dry sense of humor and his sarcastic woes that he couldn't properly smoke a cigarette.

"I don't know," Raoul said, phasing through the door. Unlike Jazz, he tended not to appear in the house and if Hound had already closed the door, he wouldn't open it again. "You didn't like the sensation of becoming stuck in that mire ?" To her private glee, he tended to sound a lot like Gordon Ramsey when he was particularly annoyed.

As a spy (though it had taken a lot for him to admit to it), he tended to take his disguise seriously: now he his hair dripped on to his soaked clothes and his boots squeaked and squelched as he walked. The positive side was that he wasn't truly wet and didn't track water all over the house; the downside was that when he sulked, he remained "damp" for hours .

"What happened before ?" Armonie asked curiously as Hound and Raoul joined them around the table. The spy took a quick glance at the cups cradled in their hands and frowned thoughtfully.

"You're talking about the War," he said in an oddly flat voice.

Hound rested a hand on his friend's damp shoulder. "It's a sensitive subject," he said unnecessarily.

"We were talking about the Battle of Sha-Rannah," Hot Rod agreed, transforming into a papillon and climbing into Armonie's lap to make room for her to move. Katie slouched into Armonie's open seat as she moved, sighing tiredly. "And how Jack and I landed in Italy."

The table was quiet for a moment. "In the beginning of our race and those of our predecessors, there was The Cube," Jazz said quietly as he reheated the stew and poured a bowl for Katie. The vet didn't look like she had any inclination to listen, dropping her head down on the table in front of her. "Like your God, it was our original Creator, or so the legends go."

"They say that the runes carved on the sides were from our first language," he said. "Ancient Cybertronian – though we don't use it now, the knowledge is ingrained in our data cores and we use it for decoration on armor." He pressed a hand to his right shoulder, his jaw, his sternum. "I have strength , determination , courage ."

Jazz put the steaming bowl in front of Katie and gently nudged her arm with a spoon. She took it drowsily and began eating. Looking on the table, Jordan noted that she had taken out her implants; she faced Jazz, who signed what Jordan assumed was a translation of the conversation.

"It's instinctive knowledge, you could say," Hound said with a polite nod to Jazz, a silent agreement to pick up the thread of the legend. "This whole story of The Cube. It gave us life apart from electricity and the ability to think and feel – it gave us our sparks , the souls that made us different than simple drones."

Raoul snorted bitterly, crossing his arms almost petulantly across his damp chest. "Where there's an artifact of great power, there are also those that crave it," he muttered. "Millions of your years ago, a mech sought to steal its power for himself. He started the War. The power of The Cube warped his mind and only a few could see it until it was too late." He placed a hand on the table and metal knobs and spires rose from the wood and great canyons and tears yawned, darkened by the holoform to make it appear as if it traveled deeper, deeper than the surface of the table. The whole thing glowed from thousands of tiny lights so that it appeared as if lit from within. "The War tore apart our world, turned us against each other. Those that chose not to fight were murdered." Two lines of mechanoids, featureless black silhouettes, appeared at the yawning edge of a chasm. The back row raised weapons to the backs of the first row, blue lights appearing in the muzzles of their guns.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the holoform disappeared. "That got dark," Jazz commented to no one in particular.

"It's war," Armonie pointed out, stroking Mutt's long fur where he sat in her lap. "It tends not to be a fun experience."

Hound shook his head. " That is where it all began. With The Cube." He put his own hand on the table and the spires and chasms returned. This time, the beautiful lights were gone, rendering the landscape dark and bleak. Buildings were crumbled and the crevasses yawned deeper and darker than ever. "When our planet was reduced to nothing more than a wasteland, we took our War elsewhere, to other worlds."

"Which we then ruined," Raoul muttered bitterly. Calm as ever, Hound reached out and touched his friend's wrist. The spy fell silent.

"We split up," Kent said. "The Decepticon Army was much larger so we moved from frontline warfare to guerilla. Small squads were much better at sowing discord among the ranks and much more effective at thinning their numbers than outright fighting them."

Jordan nodded thoughtfully. "That makes sense," Armonie murmured. "You're all much smaller as well."

Evidently this was a sore point for Jazz, who made a face; Katie, when she understood what was said, made the laughing sound in sign language. Personally Jordan thought that Katie signed her laughter more than she made the sounds (especially when her implants weren't in) because she was self-conscious of the sound…and Jordan had to admit that she thought it was rather eerie.

"Jack, Kent, and I were all together in a squad," Mutt added. "Along with Mags, a bunch of the femmes…and others." The Rogues around the table nodded solemnly and didn't pry. "Against the instincts of nearly everyone on our crew we went after Prime's ship at Tyger Pax."

Jazz's head snapped around so fast that Jordan thought that if he had been human, he would have broken his own neck. "That was you ?"

"We were on the Resilient ," Mutt said. "We received your distress calls and almost didn't go…Mags certainly didn't want to go but Ariel insisted."

The Rogues around the table flinched. "They say that she could predict the future with her feelings sometimes," Hound explained to the humans. "But just as often she would lead people into ambushes."

"She went by gut instinct as you would say," Raoul murmured. "It didn't always serve her well in terms of tactics but she did well enough as the commander of her forces. Why was she placed with Mags?"

Kent snorted inelegantly. "Think about that statement." When Jordan cocked her head, his gaze softened just a little. "She was a good leader but she needed someone to guide her. Mags was another of the commanders in the Autobot Army best known for his patience."

Mutt barked a dry laugh. "It didn't serve him well with her! They drove each other crazy ." He sobered quickly. "She still got her way in the end and we still went to Tyger Pax."

The table was silent for a long moment. "The Decepticons ambushed us at Sha-Rannah." Kent repeated quietly. "They fired on us with those that transformed into fighters and used the main guns on their own ship to try and force us to land. We managed to get a few distress signals out and a warning that the Decepticons were very active in that area."

"There were a lot of scientists in our group," Mutt added when Kent fell silent. "We saved a bunch of them by sending them off in protoform stasis. At least, we thought we did."

"We were forced to crash on Sha-Rannah," Kent added. "A lot of our crew died before the Decepticons pulled back. I think that was probably when Bumblebee and Prime sent The Cube away."

Jazz hummed. "We didn't dare say anything over the comms about it," he admitted. "But we had the artifact and just as quickly had to hide it. In desperation and under torture, Bumblebee shot it off and Megatron and the Decepticons followed."

"We lost more of our number," Mutt murmured. "We were stuck on Sha-Rannah until we could get the protoform stasis pods fixed and even then we couldn't get in contact with anyone, all of our maps were fried. We were well and truly stuck and we were running out of supplies." He sighed, shifting forms again, becoming a coyote. At this point, Jordan wasn't entirely sure if his shifts were intentional or not. Or perhaps they were nervous tics. "We sent of Mags, who was the worst hurt, and Ariel first. She couldn't deal with the guilt that it had been her feelings that had led us all to be ambushed. It was one thing for her operatives, but knowing that she had dragged us off in hopes of finding her mate again…it tore her apart. We got the message late that Prime had left the sector to chase after The Cube with his crew. In transit, they had no set course so we made do with their projected vectors."

Hound sighed. "Well, the base told me that they hadn't heard from anyone lately," he said. "Maybe they're still out there."

"Maybe they've landed," Jazz shot back. "There seems to be a lot of us on Earth that fell well below the radar."

Mutt grumbled under his breath. "Next we sent the remaining scientists, all save Jack because I needed him to help me with the stasis pods. We were on the third set when we realized that the targeting computer had been broken…we may as well have been sending them into the black willy-nilly." He sighed, shifting in Armonie's lap until she scratched his ears with her flesh hand. She took a long sip of her whiskey. "The targeting calculator rebooted every few minutes and would be constantly 'recalibrating' using a different reference point each time. Each recalibration could result in a difference of up to forty-five degrees between the distance of one set of protoforms and another." Turning, Mutt buried his face in Armonie's chest and neck.

"We didn't realize until there were only a few of us left." Everyone save Raoul and Mutt jumped, turning to find Jack leaning against the wall. "Decided not to tell anybody to prevent panic and did our best to fix the issue as quickly and quietly as we could. It was between me and Mutt...no one else."

Kent peered closely at Jack. " That's why there was such a difference in our landing times," he said accusingly. "I'd been here for a year by the time you landed."

The scientist nodded, waving off the seat that Jordan offered. To their surprise he became a hawk and fluttered over to Armonie, who raised a hand for him to land. She seemed entirely unbothered by the fact that she was a perch for a dog and a hunting bird, transferring Jack's hawk form to her whole shoulder.

"Jack and I were the last to be sent out - we set the same coordinates so we could at least try to remain together," Mut murmured from Armonie's lap. "Then we landed on Earth."

From Jack's tension where he rested on her shoulders, that wasn't the whole story. Still, she reached up and stroked his brindled chest and buried the fingers of her other hand in Mutt's long fur.

"He landed wrong," Jack said, clicking his beak around each word. "There were a lot of...he injured himself pretty badly. So we managed to scare Armonie pretty badly when I was trying to get supplies to fix him."

Despite the somber atmosphere, Jordan found it difficult to bite back a laugh. "I can't imagine Army being scared," she said when Kent looked at her reproachfully.

Armonie laughed, much to Jordan's relief. "I wasn't... scared ...but I most definitely didn't know what to make of the driverless car that seemed to be following me around."

* * *

As they were all sitting down around the dining room table (save for Jimmy, who remained horizontal and continued to groan), Armonie heard a knock on the front door. It was followed shortly by three more.

Knock. Knock-knock. Knock .

A moment later, Paddy pushed open the door. " Howdy, " he called in English, poking his head in. " Army? "

" Kitchen, " she yelled back. " My trespassers are sharing breakfast with me. " Chris and Paul made faces but said nothing; Armonie decided that she liked the odd pair.

Paddy lumbered in. He was a big man with coffee-colored skin and a build that always made his clothes look two sizes too small. Armonie could hear Jimmy gulp as he straightened to his full height and she struggled not to laugh. " Put them to work, I see, " Paddy said with a booming laugh. His English had a British accent, a result of growing up in South Africa and England. He kept his hair in a plethora of tiny braids, a style he had seen once while on vacation and decided that he liked.

" There's coffee in the kitchen, " Armonie told him as he lumbered over. " Jimmy's the one that needs the medic. Who'd you bring? "

The big man shrugged, squeezing past Chris and Paul to fetch ups and a mug of the offered coffee. " I texted the medic on duty. Joanna, I think her name is. "

" I want to press charges for assault, " Jimmy called weakly from the vicinity of Armonie's couch. Spitefully she had laid out a drop cloth before she allowed them to prop him up on the couch - so she wouldn't have to wash the upholstery of his stink, she had told them. " She attacked me without provocation ."

Paddy glanced at Armonie who shrugged. " The ben zonah threatened me with a gun. I reacted. " She sipped her tea calmly.

Paddy shrugged. " Well, you are on her property. " He shifted his bulk into one of Armonie's dining room chairs. It creaked beneath his weight. " Regardless of whether or not you have a hunting permit. As I'm sure Army pointed out, nothing's in season anyway so I can fine you for that if you'd like. "

" They can't seem to agree whether they have a permit or if it's at their campsite, " Armonie added when Paddy glanced at her.

" Another fine, " Paddy agreed. " On top of threatening someone with a gun. "

Jimmy tried to sit up and groaned when he hurt himself. Bill didn't seem to be much in the mood for helping him out, watching from where he sat. The way Armonie saw it, the kid deserved it; he seemed to be getting them into more and more trouble the more he opened his mouth.

" What brings you guys to Italy? " Armonie asked while the kid continued to retch and writhe on the couch. She kept an eye on him to make sure he didn't knock over her end table.

Paddy jerked his thumb toward the American. " You gonna help him? " he asked quietly in Ivrit; Armonie shrugged and sipped her tea.

" Vacation ," Chris said glumly. " Guess that's out now. "

Her friend glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. " Pressing charges? " he asked in Ivrit.

Armonie shrugged again. " If I do, I'd only want to press on Jimmy. As you know, I don't take kindly to being threatened with guns, " she replied in the same language.

Paddy covered his laugh with his mug. They had first met shortly after Armonie had moved to Italy with Agostino. A very drunk man, afraid of the strange Israeli woman, had threatened her with a gun. She disarmed him very nicely – only a few small bruises, no broken bones or wrenched limbs – but she still had to sit through a police report. Paddy had found it absolutely hysterical, being at the very tail-end of his up to then boring shift.

Obviously neither Agostino nor the drunkard found it amusing, but her military background and his study of Ivrit – a personal interest inspired by his Jewish boyfriend – made them fast friends. It was a friendship that Agostino hadn't particularly warmed to, but it seemed that his usual jealousy was decreased for Paddy due to his homosexuality.

Yet another argument was whether or not Paddy was "safe" to be around their children, an argument that always resulted in Armonie sleeping outside, no matter what weather.

Armonie hummed, taking a bite of her omelette. " This is good, " she told Chris and Paul. Their smiles held fear in them and Armonie tried to dim the fire she felt in her veins. They were good kids - misguided, sure, but good kids. She chewed purposefully, looking down at her mug of tea until she had composed herself again.

Before work she'd have to go on another run to be fit for human or animal interaction.

Calm again, she told Paddy in English, " I don't press charges for assault or trespassing. I will for the missing permits and the proximity to occupied property. "

Paddy whistled. " Hefty fines, " he murmured in Ivrit.

" Scare them with the numbers, " Armonie replied in the same language, forcing herself to slow down for him on account of the itching beneath her skin. " I'll pay for a decent portion. "

The officer gave her a hook-lipped smirk as he sipped his coffee. Unlike Agostino, he liked the American style of coffee - it was yet another thing that her husband didn't like about him. " Getting soft there, Amy ," he teased.

" We were discussing fair amounts of fines, " Armonie told Bill flatly when he coughed pointedly. She pushed her half-eaten plate toward Paddy who eyed her. " I'll leave you in his hands. " She glanced at him. " Let me know if you need me to kick their asses again. "

She left.

It wasn't running - that came later.

* * *

Paddy left her a long-winded text later in the afternoon. He took the kids to town for processing - to his disgust, they all fit in his car though it was a bit of a tight squeeze and the irreverent bastard allowed them to park their dirt bikes in the backyard with the other one. She got a screenshot of his phone showing that he texted another officer to search the woods for the Americans' drunk friend Frank and one other unnamed friend that had apparently stayed behind to keep an eye on him.

He took their guns as well, which were found to be registered to a family nearby. Armonie recognized the name and Paddy surmised that the dirt bikes belonged to them as well.

The medic Jacobsen (not Joanna; how Paddy could mix up those two names was beyond Armonie) finally showed up and took custody of Jimmy. As Armonie expected, he was only bruised; she declared that he would be short of breath for the rest of the day and that he should go on a mild diet to get his stomach settled again. She was adamant that he not drink alcohol for another two days just in case; Paddy included an entire paragraph dedicated to Jimmy's displeasure at that statement.

At processing, the majority of the men were very agreeable. Only Jimmy was difficult, insisting that he knew his rights and he was well within them to press charges on Armonie. A call to his relatives, the ones that the guns were registered to, shut him up.

Armonie skimmed through the rest. Paddy wanted to know how much of the hefty fine she wanted to pay; she responded that she wanted them to each pay two hundred euros. He responded immediately with a picture of the invoices next to a message: x4 . She sucked at her teeth at it and was almost glad that she had decided to intervene.

I gave them the invoices already , Paddy added in another message. Wish I got a picture of their expressions.

Shaking her head, Armonie tucked her phone away, patted her hidden knives, and went back to work, hefting a large pail of feed. The day would move on, whether or not she participated.

And there were animals that needed to be fed and reassured.

Done with the remainder of her rounds, she backtracked to what would have been her beginning and murmured apologies to the animals that she hadn't visited that day.

Over the course of her life, Armonie found that animals were a lot like humans. They were nervous in new environments, nervous around new people; they liked their routines and didn't take kindly to having them disturbed.

Armonie could understand that if she hadn't already been used to discomfort. Perhaps it was paranoia, but she knew that to develop a routine was to open oneself up, to become complacent.

She would not become an animal in a zoo.

Behind her, a child gave a scream that the macaques echoed; more children followed his lead and soon the air was filled with unholy screeching. Shaking her head, she left the area quickly before someone could ask her to intervene.

The day was spent keeping busy, trying to ignore Paddy's incessant texts and the occasional gruff query from Agostino. She cleans kennels and enclosures, feeds more animals and helps the veterinarian tranquilize a lion in need of surgery - she had eaten a camera that a visitor had carelessly tossed into her enclosure.

She helps three children to security and gives directions to three groups of loud Americans before she can finally leave with a clean conscience.

For the first time in months she wished she could call her father, who had died when the fire consumed him in Lebanon. It had been nearly ten years but she still missed him.

" Bahadur! " he would roar in Ivrit over the phone. " You have called! "

" Aba ," she would reply with a laugh. "I always call you! "

Then her father would give a booming laugh that would eventually fade out to coughs that shook his whole body and rattled in his chest. " Yes! On the Yamim Noraim and my birthday! "

Her marriage to Agostino Scordato, a prideful Italian man, was a gulf that they would never bridge. By mutual agreement, Agostino Scordato and her new "feminine" name were off-limits to prevent their conversation ending in ashes.

Anything other than that was free game and Armonie loved telling her father everything . Now she wished she could tell him about the Americans, their threats, and the strange meteor. She wanted to discuss how she could have acted differently, hear his thoughts on how she disarmed Jimmy, and what her father thought of the proud American who had Italian relatives.

Her father liked the stories she told of Paddy and she thought that he would like how he handled the kids. She wanted to know what he would have thought of Paul and Chris, the odd pair that stood out among their friends.

Most of all, she wanted to talk about the metal creatures and their chilling stare. Ben-Davids didn't feel fear and despite her married names Armonie was a Ben-David through and through...but she had almost been afraid at the look in the eye-like lights of the things' "heads". There was intelligence there.

She slowed her battered car to a stop at a red light and ran a hand tiredly through her sweaty hair. A flash of orange to her right caught her attention and she lolled her head to the side to watch the little sports car, likely some kind of Lamborghini, roll gently up beside her. Slowly she sat up rigidly in her seat and stared.

It had no driver .

She watched in mute shock as the light changed and the driverless car made its turn. Looking around, she was fairly certain that it wasn't a trick. More so she was fairly certain that the driverless car hadn't been a robot – like the ones she had seen on the news that Google was creating. For one there hadn't been a turning apparatus attached to the wheel and she didn't think that most remote-controlled anything s had wheels and gearshifts that moved.

Her light changed and Armonie shifted her car into gear. Ben-David's didn't feel fear but lately she's been feeling far more uneasy than she would have liked. It was as if her insides were coated with grease, allowing everything to shift; it was a feeling that she very much didn't appreciate.

Armonie turned in to the park, looking out for the orange Lamborghini and anyone else that may have followed her. She didn't like the prickling feeling that she was being watched and she didn't like that it didn't once waver as she made her way to pick up her kids.

" Ima ," Amina complained good-naturedly. " You look like shit, " she murmured in German, knowing that her brother didn't understand the language. " Is it because of this morning? "

Armonie forced herself to laugh even though she knew that it didn't fool her daughter; it would fool Angelo, which was the important thing. "Watch your language," she teased.

"She learned how to swear in German," Angelo said, rolling his eyes. He looked and sounded so much like Agostino that Armonie tried not to feel annoyed. "It was the first thing she learned."

Quick as a snake, Armonie leaned over and pinched his nose playfully; Amina had already moved out of reach. "How was your day?" she asked instead as they strapped their bikes to the rack on the back of her Nissan.

Angelo groaned. " Boring ," he complained. "I had a surprise test in Spanish."

"Don't tell me you were up so late playing your game that you didn't study," Armonie murmured and her son blushed. She sighed dramatically and nudged her elbow into his side. "If you don't tell your father, I won't."

Her son grinned. "I missed two questions," he admitted. "But they were really hard! Senora said that only two people in the whole class got a perfect score." Armonie pretended not to know that there were only three other people in Angelo's Spanish class.

"Let's look it over when we get home," Armonie suggested and Angelo pretended to be pout.

Amina laughed as she fastened her bike. " Practice makes perfect ," she teased in English and her twin stuck his tongue out at her.

Laughing, Armonie's arm shot out again and snagged the tip of his tongue between her fingers; Angelo groaned, annoyed that she caught him twice in the space of a few minutes. "If you keep sticking your tongue out, your face will freeze that way," Armonie told him solemnly though her eyes were amused. "Or you'll lose it!"

Her son rolled his eyes but when she released his tongue he laughed. " Fine ," he grumbled, pretending to be annoyed. "I know you're lonely so I'll spend time with you!" Then he blushed and looked away, startled that he had said something so bold.

Armonie laughed as she climbed in the car. "Better than you lazing about playing your games," she teased though she had no problem with Angelo's video games despite Agostino's stiff disapproval. Despite her words, Angelo knew this and smiled weakly at her though his cheeks were still bright red. He scooted into his seat beside Amina. Though they were both old enough, they preferred to sit next to each other in the backseat, leading their parents and Paddy to jokingly refer to Armonie as their taxi driver.

"I learn valuable lessons from my games," Angelo said loftily though his face was split by a grin. "It's in English, for one."

"With Italian subtitles," Amina added and stuck her tongue out at her brother. She slapped his hand away when he moved to grab her tongue the way Armonie had done to his.

Armonie smiled as they bickered, relaxing just a little. She remained vigilant as she drove, trying to pinpoint the source of the prickle at the back of her neck. "How was your day, Ima ?" Amina asked, shouting over her brother.

The driverless Lamborghini drove past them and a man with hair the color of sun-bleached bone sat in the driver's seat. As the car turned from view, she saw that his hands didn't move on the wheel as it turned itself; he flickered like a broken TV.

"It went well enough," Armonie told her distractedly. The prickle on the back of her neck faded a bit though it was still present. Was the car – or whatever cameras were on it – watching her? If so it was doing a poor job – Lamborghinis, especially orange ones, didn't blend in very well. "I got to tranquilize a lioness."

As predicted, that made both of her children perk up for different reasons. Amina wanted to know about the dosage and how it was done; Angelo wanted to know why and how the vet removed the mangled remains of the camera. She left out her private thought that the lioness might have to be put down, since apparently the metal and plastic broken by her great yellowed teeth had likely cut up her throat and stomach. But she was a simple zookeeper; what did she know?

They asked for more details of her day, the same way they had since they were children. Who had to clean Lizette the elephant's cage that day? What about the giraffes; did the one with the twisted ankle recover? How did tooth-cleaning for the hippopotamus go? Was the polar bear hot in the middle of an Italian summer?

" I was told that a polar bear isn't really white!" Angelo said proudly. Only with her did her teenage children act like they were in elementary school; they were constantly well-behaved and on their guard around everyone else. Sometimes Armonie wasn't sure how to feel about that though more often than not she found it endearing.

Amina snorted. "Duh, they have clear fur; everyone knows that!"

Though she wasn't looking at them, she could feel their expectant stares. "I don't handle the polar bear," she reminded them before it could escalate further.

"Do you handle the otters?" Angelo asked.

"Do you handle the snakes?" Amina asked and Armonie tried not to sigh. The downside (among others) of having twins was that they tended to build off each other.

"Do you handle the monkeys?"

"Do you handle the crocodiles?"

"Do you handle the birds?"

"Do you handle the lions?"

"Do you handle the butterflies?"

"How do you handle butterflies? " Amina demanded.

Angelo stuck his tongue out at her childishly, yelping when he bit down on it as Armonie went over a bump in the road; Amina cackled.

As they continued to drive, her children continued to ask after the animals at the zoo and Armonie watched the cars around them. She saw the orange Lamborghini three more times, each time with a different driver: once with a pink-haired woman, once with a green-haired man that she thought looked like a character from one of Angelo's video games, and once as a man with light purple hair.

None of them turned their heads or moved their hands as they drove.

The second time around, Angelo caught sight of the orange car – and its green-haired occupant – and slapped his sister to get her attention, resulting in a tussle in the backseat. Armonie seriously debated the pros and cons of slamming on the brakes but decided that the damage to her brake pads and tires wasn't worth it. She settled for hitting a speed bump faster than she normally would have, tossing her children around in the backseat.

This time she was the one that laughed even though greasy nervousness settled in her stomach again. The sensation of being watched hadn't left but it decreased when the orange car turned away and increased when she saw it again.

"That's so weird," Angelo said, peering out the window as Armonie was about to turn on their street. "That's the second time I saw that car."

Amina crowded him against the glass then backed away, pretending to gag. "You're all sweaty!" she said, punching him in the shoulder. "Are you sure it's the same car?"

Glancing in her mirrors, Armonie saw the orange Lamborghini turn on the road behind them. The driver was now a man with skin far darker than Paddy's, making his light purple hair stand out even more. He immediately turned off again, driving his expensive sports car without hesitation off the paved road to a dirt road that Armonie recognized as a nearby park.

They all winced when they heard the car's undercarriage scrape but there was no hesitation in the car; it rattled on as if oblivious to their observance and the damage it accrued.

"How many orange Lamborghinis do you think I see a day?" Angelo demanded when the spell was broken. Armonie turned on to their street. "You're more likely to see them than I am!"

Armonie swallowed a laugh when Amina punched Angelo in the shoulder. From his yelp, it stung. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you're the one with the mechanic boyfriend ," Angelo whined. "You're at the shop more than practice; I'm sure you see a lot of Lamborghinis."

They both froze and turned to Armonie; Amina punched her brother again and by his yelp it was harder. "Not your father," Armonie reminded them drily. "Be safe and no babies before you're twenty."

Amina let out a strangled squeak and Angelo turned bright red. Though Armonie laughed, she couldn't help but feel a sense of dread at the sight of the orange Lamborghini.

* * *

 **Cybertronian names : I'm somewhat leery about listing names that haven't been "decided" yet because a lot of this series is based on calling Cybertronians (and humans) the names they want to be called. So even though someone may have a name that can be translated or approximated (Ultra Magnus, Elita-One, etc.) I didn't want to list them until their owners decided on what they wanted to be called. That is why Mutt/Hot Rod doesn't really list them except for nicknames or their ranks.**

 **Jack's hawk : One night I had a dream that Mutt replaced Armonie's daemon (a la the His Dark Materials series), which led me to spending a few hours imagining how everyone in this series would react to their daemons and what they would be. Since Mutt already stays in Armonie's shadow, many would automatically assume that he's her daemon. It would also make sense that Jack would dabble in it due to his natural curiosity. Also, Jordan's out of seats. He becomes an African crowned eagle.**

 **Aba \- Ivrit/Hebrew for "Father"**

 **Ben-David's Fire \- it's not a literal fire but it sometimes feels like it to them. It's a compulsion for movement that they have difficulty repressing and if they do so for too long they become irritable.**

 **Bahadur Ben-David \- the only child of Aamina and Mukhtar Ben-David. Mama Aamina (as Bahadur's friends would call her) didn't like that her husband gave their only daughter a man's name, but as Bahadur grew older, even Aamina could agree that it suited her; she was even sad when Bahadur married and changed both names to something more feminine.**

 ** _Yamim Noraim_ \- the High Holy Days in Judaism, which include Rosh Hashanah ("Jewish New Year") and Yom Kippur ("Day of Atonement").**

 **Armonie's car \- 2008 Nissan Qashqai**

* * *

 **Katie won't feature much in this story as it is a bonding moment primarily between Armonie and Jordan (and Mutt, as Prowl/Kent is still being grumpy).**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **~DC**


	4. Chapter 3

**Sorry it took so long to get this done! I'd gotten caught up with a bunch of different things ( _taiko_ class, work, playing with "newborn" characters that demanded attention...). **

**Hopefully now that I've gotten all of that sorted, I can pay proper attention to this story and get it moving along!**

 **Also posted to AO3 under the name Dracoduceus.**

 **~DC**

* * *

The next morning, Armonie woke up earlier than usual for her run. Amina had begged off their run the night before, telling her mother that she and Angelo would be riding their bikes to school since the weather was so nice. For the past few weeks it had been unseasonably rainy, making the ride in miserable. Now the weather was starting to clear and the roads and trails were beginning to drain. Running before school _and_ riding their bikes in would be too much and Amina admitted that she nearly fell asleep in class a few times.

Agostino was away on a business trip. In fact, one of the reasons Armonie had left on her run so early was because she needed to take her husband to the airport. He would be away for two and a half weeks in China, something she knew that he would and did hate.

Honestly, she knew that she should feel more sympathy for her proud husband, but lately he had been overbearing to a degree that was more annoying than usual. His pride was stung by the growing prevalence of his children, on the way to being multilingual, speaking the languages they were learning in school. Already they could speak English better than him and his wife was already fluent in four languages. That she was learning Spanish and German to practice with their children and Mandarin to help him with work further tweaked at his pride.

Some time apart would do them good.

As they were going to bed, Amina promised to make sure that she and Angelo got to school on time so Armonie could leave for her run with a free conscience. Just like Amina promised, the day was shaping up to be a nice one and already Armonie could feel the tension slowly bleed out of her as she ran down the trail.

Without her daughter slowing her down, Armonie was able to reach the area of the woods where she had confronted the bikers much faster. Not to say that Amina was slow but rather that Armonie had been running like this since she had been old enough to do so. During training for conscription, she had been embarrassed at how easy all of the running had been – until she had seen its wear on her fellow conscripts. She hadn't made many friends during that period, not with her military lineage and certainly not with her endurance and speed in running, but then she wasn't one to make friends easily.

Shaking herself from her thoughts, Armonie rolled her shoulders, debating whether or not she wanted another look at the crater. She hadn't _seen_ the meteor that had made the deep crater, something that now bothered her. It was clear that _something_ had been there – something hot that had baked the moisture out of the muddy ground. Despite her distraction it hadn't escaped her notice that most of the crater had been almost bone-dry, the only moisture coming from the early morning mist and light rain.

Amina had been able to walk with relative ease down the center of it, her weight supported by stone-hard dirt and clay. The dampness had saved the trees from burning as well despite the meteor's heat and only a few of them had been scorched if they survived its landing.

The police had rounded up the few other hunters in the area according to Paddy late the night before. There had only been another group of stupid Americans that spoke poor Italian; they didn't have a proper permit either so they were slapped with fines. It seemed that neither group had wanted to listen to their Italian guides when they were told that nothing was in season.

They had all been lured by the falling meteor.

Shaking her head at her own damned curiosity, Armonie carefully picked her way off the trail. It was still muddy but with a lack of heavy rain the night before it was beginning to dry. Regardless Armonie knew that she would return home muddy from the knees down and was again glad that Agostino wouldn't be home to argue about it.

To her surprise, the crater was no longer there and there was evidence that someone had very quickly scooped dirt and mud to hide it. There were long furrows of scraped earth and torn vegetation on either side and she picked her way along more carefully.

There were no roads nearby that would support a digging machine and the trail was too narrow for even a small-sized one. Perhaps it could have driven through the trees but that was difficult – and she saw no evidence that such a machine had traveled through.

It couldn't have been people with shovels – the long marks in dirt and foliage weren't something a human with a tool in their hands could easily reproduce. And aside from her own tracks she didn't see any new footprints from digging crews and nothing crossed the wide swath of displaced dirt. There were a few irregular patches on the ground, like crews had rested heavy equipment there, but no footprints, human or otherwise.

Muttering to herself in Ivrit, Armonie inspected the area. Looking _up_ , she noticed the broken branches, suffusing the air with a faint pine scent as their resin met the cool morning air. Picking up a branch nearby – _another_ piece that had been broken, how odd – she flung it so that it struck one of the hanging branches. Both branches fell with hiss and a thump of pine needles, catching in the branches of a nearby oak and dragging more broken branches to the ground.

From the resin (slightly hardened but soft enough to deform) it was a relatively recent break; sometime last night she would guess, maybe even sometime in the late afternoon. From the oak branch she guessed the same – the leaves still looked to be in good shape and hadn't had a chance to wilt.

Suddenly nervous, she dropped the branches to the ground and scrubbed her hands on her running shorts. Sweat made her thighs slick when her palms touched her bare leg and she shivered. She remembered the mechanical things and how their movement had broken branches high off the ground –high for a _human_ , anyway.

She could feel a thought coming like watching an approaching car. Wrapping her arms around her middle she tried not to shiver, staring down at the broken branches. There was something there, a fine point of connection like spider silk that she was missing; she just needed to find the right angle to see it.

The mechanical beings. The crater; the meteor that caused it. Now the broken trees and a hastily-hidden crater. Taking a deep breath, Armonie looked around the forest. It seemed far too convenient to be coincidental; therefore they had to be connected.

Armonie couldn't help but feel like she were in some kind of prank show; any minute she half-expected someone to jump out and yell "surprise" because how was this her life? How was any of this real?

Shaking her head, she decided that she didn't need to know. It just like when she was a little girl where questioning things too hard resulted in even more headache, mostly because her father couldn't discuss much of his work with her. She was a simple kind of person – a _point-and-shoot_ kind of soldier to use an American phrase. What she did know was that this kind of thing endangered her family.

That was the thought that was coming and it made her _see red_. It was a miracle that she pulled out her phone without fumbling, her hands shaking with rage. Amina answered on the second ring. "Ja?" she asked in German.

"If you don't leave soon, you'll be late," Armonie told her, forcing her tone steady and calm. She didn't want her daughter to know how afraid she was for them.

To her credit, Amina didn't seem at all fazed by the fact that they were still about forty-five minutes off of when they should leave for a relaxing ride to school. " _I'll see if I can get Angelo to move his lazy ass,_ " she replied after a brief pause. " _I'll tell him we'll get breakfast on the way in. I'll take some money from your purse._ "

Armonie didn't even have it in her to laugh as Amina had clearly intended. "Good; go and be careful, _neshama_."

"Ich liebe dich," Amina murmured after a pause. Armonie could hear her moving and the rustle of cloth in the background; she was probably getting dressed. " _Text you when we leave, text you when we get our breakfast._ "

" _Be careful_ ; love you too," Armonie murmured and ended the call.

She jogged back to the path and sprinted back to the ridge by her house, laying on her belly in the damp grass to look over the edge. She couldn't see anyone around the house but that doesn't mean there weren't watchers. There were no fresh car tracks that she could see and what she could see of the grass at a distance didn't seem to indicate anyone else following her idea.

Taking a deep breath, she settled further into the grass and fell completely still. She wasn't the sniper type of soldier, but that didn't mean that she hadn't been trained that way; now she became stone and let her eyes move before her head. Moving slowly, she kept an eye on her house and her children and wondered if she was making the right choice.

On one hand, she should go down and pick up her children and drive them into school herself; on the other hand she wanted to search the area on her own, to make sure that her family was safe. She watched, hidden in the grass, as Angelo and Amina filed out of the house, mounted their bikes, and rode off down the road.

When she rolled around, she nearly screamed to find one of the mechanical beasts standing over her. How it had managed to sneak up on her was beyond her – it wasn't exactly quiet, filling the space between them with quiet clicks and whirs of its metal parts moving. It crouched behind her like a ridiculous spider, its double-jointed arms tucked upward and its legs bending unnaturally upward at the hips.

They stared at each other: her on her back utterly exposed, the metal creature crouched like a resting spider, appearing to stare at her with bright blue lights that mimicked eyes.

"Italian?" it spoke with an accent. _Was it programmed with the accent or did it develop it on its own?_ Armonie thought deliriously. "Or is there another language you prefer? Since you did not seem to speak English yesterday?"

Armonie gulped. Its posture didn't seem threatening and its bulk had been hidden from her children by the edge of the hill.

"Did I startle you?" the thing continued. "I can sense your hormone levels spiking; I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

Armonie gulped. Human attackers she could deal with; this massive metal monster she didn't know what to do with. The few weapons she had on her would do nothing against such a metal carapace – against a creature whose head was as large as her torso!

The creature rocked back a little, tucking its large limbs closer to its body. Ridiculously Armonie was almost reminded of a cat curling its paws beneath itself. "I assumed that you would speak Italian," the thing mused. "Am I incorrect? You spoke Italian yesterday morning when speaking to those hunters; I am sure that I am not mistaken." It cocked its head to the side as if realizing something. "Oh. You can call me Saetta – that's the name I chose for myself – if that would make you feel more uncomfortable."

She was ashamed at how long it took her to respond. "Hello," she said when she was sure her voice wouldn't tremble. It still came out weaker than she would like but it didn't sound as terrified as she felt. "I am called Armonie."

"Is that your real name?" Saetta inquired curiously, cocking its large head from side to side like a confused puppy. "Or did you have a previous name? 'Armonie' is not on the public record for ownership of the property."

"Did you come to inquire about property ownership?" Armonie replied with a hint of a bite. "Or was there another reason for you to loom over me?"

Saetta rumbled deep in his chest, reminding her of a purring cat. It didn't seem bothered by her waspishness. "I wanted to know if I could ask for your assistance in acquiring parts to repair my companion and your permission to remain on your property."

Of all the things to request, that wasn't what Armonie had expected and she blinked up at Saetta in surprise. "That's _it_?" she asked and swore to herself under her breath in Ivrit. "How do I know you're not…I don't know…going to do something?"

"'Do something'?" Saetta echoed, sounding confused. "Like what?"

Armonie got control of her body again and pushed herself to her feet. She was dismayed to find that even crouched as he was in such a contorted position, her head was level with the lights that mimicked eyes.

" _Oh_!" Saetta exclaimed. "You think I will harm your family. No! That is not my intention!" He shifted, rearing back a little. His awkward position made Armonie's own shoulders and hips ache to think of contorting in such a way. "I'm a scientist, an inventor – my companion is a warrior, my guard so to speak. Our war is more or less over, only sporadic battles and skirmishes being fought across the galaxy."

"So why are you on Earth?" Armonie asked. "Was that you? The meteor and the crater?"

Saetta nodded and reared back. The crouched position he took on looked just as awkward and Armonie forced herself not to focus on the odd movements of Saetta's metal chassis. "The one you saw was mine," he said. "I was relatively uninjured from impact my companion, however…was not so lucky. He hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle and it was by good fortune that we landed anywhere near each other."

"Hence your assistance with repairs," Armonie finished grimly.

"Yes," Saetta agreed. "I need a pair of small hands – and some assistance finding and getting supplies." To support his statement, he held up his own hands – each hand was nearly as long from the heel to the tips of his six fingers as Armonie was tall. "Normally we would just remove the armor but I do not have the tools for it – I need to work _around_ it this time and my hands aren't _quite_ small enough to fit." He wiggled the fingers comically and with detached interest Armonie noted that they also had an extra joint compared to her own fingers.

Armonie frowned at Saetta, charmed by it against her will. Her gut told her that it was relatively harmless – like a big, playful puppy or horse nevermind the inherent danger with something as large and unfeeling as him. "Are you an AI?" she asked, resisting the urge to prop her hands on her hips. "A machine? Computer program?"

"Not quite," Saetta told her amiably. "I have a soul – or so they tell me," he added with a laugh that sounded like a rattling engine. "I'm not an artificial intelligence, at least not in the sense you're probably thinking. I suppose you could call me an autonomous robotic organism."

"'Organism' implies life," Armonie shot back. "A singular living creature; plant or animal."

The machine – "autonomous robotic organism" – cocked its head at her and the plates that formed its odd face shifted. Clearly it couldn't make many facial expressions that would be easily recognizable by her but she thought it looked impressed. "I am a machine in the way that you are," it replied. "The cameras in my optic sensors transfer information into my processor just like your eyes do through your optic nerves. I consume fuel – similar to how you consume food – to gain energy." It used a blunt-tipped finger to tap its helm. "' _I think, therefore I am_ ,'" it quoted with what Armonie thought could be a smile. With rigid, segmented lips it was hard to tell. "I'm not quite like you but that doesn't mean I'm a mere machine."

Armonie frowned at him thoughtfully, trying to pinpoint when exactly she began to think of Saetta as "him" rather than "it". "What makes you different than a 'mere machine'?" she asked despite herself.

"My charming personality," Saetta said, one of the lights – his optic sensors as he had said – blinked, closing and opening like a camera shutter. She found herself trying not to smile at the attempt of a wink.

Before she could retort with a scathing reply, Saetta reared back until he was kneeling, still hunched over so the majority of the hill blocked his bulk. With his large six-fingered hands (with two thumbs each, she noticed belatedly) he tugged apart some of the bright orange metal plates covering his chest. With the sound of moving metal, internal components shifted, spun, and slid apart, revealing a glowing blue globe the size of Armonie's head.

"This is my soul," Saetta said as the light spilled out between the cracks of the metal plates shielding it. His voice was hushed, reverent. He opened his mouth as if to say more and then closed it. Armonie supposed she could relate: she felt like she should say something but didn't know what. They both watched as Saetta released the plates and his metal body shifted to hide the glowing orb.

Armonie drummed her fingers on her elbow, looking up at Saetta with less fear. The "autonomous robotic organism" stared down at her curiously, waiting without pressure for her response. "What guarantee do I have that you will not hurt me or my family?" she asked sharply.

"What guarantee can I give that you would believe?" Saetta shot back. The moving plates and wires around his optic sensors moved to make it look like his "eyes" crinkled with amusement.

She fought against a smile, deciding that she would like Saetta. "What do you need?"

Saetta cocked his large head to the side. "I have a list of materials – most of them would most likely be found in the average garage or outdoor shed." He paused, pointedly not looking over the hill at Armonie's house and the four sheds in the back. "If not, they're simple and innocuous enough to get at a hardware store." _And I'm not human enough to go in one_ , she thought he was implying. One of his hands rose, a finger as long as Armonie from hips to crown jabbing dramatically in the air and then at Armonie herself. It made her realize that he would be what Amina would call a drama queen. " _And_ , I need your hands."

"I'm not sure I'd call my sheds 'average'," Armonie murmured. "Give me a list and I'll see what I have." She paused, remembering another of her earlier worries. "Does anyone else know you're here?"

"No," she was assured immediately. Saetta flinched. "Well, anyone who saw us crash would know but I tried to cover the landing sites…bury them a little at least. My companion and I were using a new cloaking device I developed – it would hide us from scans from others of our kind so no one else should be aware that we're here on that end."

Armonie pursed her lips. "Others of your kind," she echoed. "Are there others here? Aside from your…uh… _companion_?"

If he caught the subtle dig he showed no sign; not that reading the expressions he made was particularly easy. "Looking through my backlogs of transmission receipts, there is another cluster of us in North America," Saetta replied. "I do not see anyone else on my scans – long- or short-range. At the moment it is just myself and my _companion_." He put heavy emphasis on the last word just as Armonie had, adding a purposefully-awkward wink.

"Other humans know about you, yes?" Armonie asked, drumming her fingers on her elbow. She ignored that she had instinctively crossed her arms over her stomach and hoped Saetta wouldn't figure out why.

"Did you think you were something special?" Saetta teased and Armonie couldn't help but smile. "There is a coalition of human governments combined into a task force," he said. "According to a rather outdated transmission sent about a year ago," he added. "They are called N.E.S.T. – ah…I suppose the acronym would make more sense in English."

Armonie's lips twitched but she said nothing. Let him figure _that_ out on his own.

"They hunt down the…bad guys," Saetta said.

"The concept of 'good' and 'evil' is rarely black and white," Armonie pointed out.

Saetta was already shaking his head. "There are two factions of our kind," he told her kindly. "One seeks peace; the other seeks destruction."

"I'm sure you're the latter," Armonie said dryly.

A strange look crossed Saetta's odd face and Armonie realized that it was something like a frown. "The…I'm not sure what to call them in your language but perhaps… _Decepticons_ will do – they seek destruction of other worlds. Those that stand in their way are destroyed; if they are useful, they are enslaved."

Armonie drummed her fingers on her elbow again, digging the nails of her other hand into her side. She didn't like the sound of that. Perhaps sensing this, Saetta's face shifted in what could be loosely called a reassuring smile.

"The Decepticons were beat back on this world," he assured her. "Now we are all just trying to survive. I know that's not much consolation but that's all I can offer, I'm afraid."

"I don't like it," Armonie agreed. "But the way I see it I may as well help you – even though I can't tell if you are one of those De-cep-ti-cons or not – and the sooner I help you, the sooner you will be gone."

"Yes," Saetta agreed neutrally.

Armonie hummed thoughtfully. "You may as well help me look in the sheds for what you want," she said reluctantly. It was pointless to resist too much – she guessed that if he stood straight he would be nearly five metres tall from foot to crown and if he wanted to attack then there was little she could do to stop him.

"Thank you," Saetta said with such feeling that Armonie was momentarily startled. "I wasn't sure you'd help – you're very brave to be talking to me like this."

"Ben-Davids don't feel fear," Armonie told him just as her father would have if he were in her place, blinking back her surprise. "We face danger head-on with our teeth bared."

Saetta's face split in a smile and Armonie wondered how she should feel that it was becoming familiar enough that she could recognize it right away. "I'm sure," he said and unlike when Agostino said it, he sounded sincere, impressed. "Believe me when I say that I am appropriately impressed – and scared."

She frowned at him, unsure if the last part was sarcastic, but she couldn't read such an alien face. Saetta unfolded himself and Armonie watched as the large sockets of his hips snapped into a more human position. He unfurled until he stood on two legs, towering over Armonie and standing nearly level with the second-story windows of her house. Seeing him properly, she realized that a lot of his body, what wasn't gunmetal grey of active moving parts, was bright orange, scuffed and shiny all in one in the world's strangest oxymoron.

"It's possible for humans to kill our kind," Saetta continued almost cheerfully, his voice just loud enough for her to comfortably hear with the increased distance. He tapped his chest over the gaps and fissures in his orange armor. "Aim for the spark."

Shaking her head, she turned to her house and began to make her way over. As she picked her way carefully down the other side of the steep hill, she could feel the minute shifts in the ground that heralded Saetta's footsteps. He walked carefully, taking great pains to test his footing before taking a step as if afraid to tear the ground more than he had to.

Seeing the resulting footprints, she realized that what had looked like the imprint of heavy tools around the crater had in reality been his steps. "I don't know why you'd tell me that," she said brusquely as she made her way to the back of the house.

"Perhaps I am too trusting," Saetta agreed. "But Decepticons have killed my friends and what you could possibly call my family throughout the course of the war. As a mechanic and inventor, I know how to make repairs – a field medic, you could say. I've come across too many destroyed and injured by the Decepticons to be entirely comfortable with being accused of being one even in jest."

Armonie cut a glance up at him. By virtue of his much longer legs and stride, he was already ahead of her and had stopped. He stared off across the field ringing her house like something out of a movie – more evidence of his flair for the dramatic.

"I will not apologize for my words," Armonie informed him, picking her way toward his feet. In a rare gesture from her she reached out and patted one of his greaves. As she had expected, the metal felt smooth like the chassis of a car. "You could not call me merciful."

Saetta tilted his head down toward her and despite their great distance in height and that he had to bend to look at her, it still didn't feel like he _loomed_ over her. It wasn't like how she sometimes felt with Agostino, who was taller than her by more than fifteen centimeters and she wasn't sure how she should feel about it. "Perhaps not," Saetta said mildly. "Regardless I am not insulted – it was a very valid question even if I do not like it."

Near the first shed, Armonie paused to look back at Saetta. "You're very strange," she observed.

The autonomous robotic organism's resulting grin was wide enough that the metal segments that made up his face split, making his mouth appear far too large. In a lesser person it would be frightening, freakish. "So I've been told," Saetta said cheerfully.


	5. Chapter 4

**Also posted to Archive of our Own under the name Dracoduceus.**

* * *

It turned out that Saetta could fold himself into the form of a tiny little Lamborghini - the same Lamborghini, in fact, that she and her kids had seen the day before. The "drivers" were "hardlight projections" and Saetta had changed them multiple times simply because he still wasn't yet sure of what form he wanted to take.

Unfortunately, it produced an odd issue: a Lamborghini wasn't anywhere _near_ large enough to carry the materials that Saetta and his unnamed companion required and he couldn't stray too far from his physical body with his hardlight projection.

When she pulled up to the hardware store in town driving her Nissan, she was dismayed to see that Paddy was there. "Long time no see," he teased as she got out of the car. "I was beginning to think you were ignoring me."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, perhaps a little too sharply.

But Paddy was easygoing, at least with her, and simply rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Ouch, Armie," he teased. "I didn't realize I wasn't allowed out on the town when I wasn't at work."

Armonie winced and scrubbed a hand over her face. She had hastily showered and changed, wiping workout- and fear-sweat from her body and rinsing mud from her legs. Her hair was still damp, dragged into a messy braid that sent chills down her spine and wet her new shirt. "Sorry," she told him. "It's been...rough."

Immediately, Paddy looked concerned. "You don't have anyone else bothering you, do you?" he asked and Armonie barked out a rough laugh at that. She could see Saetta pull up in the spot on the other side of her car. "I'm serious, Armonie."

"No," she told him, trying to force cheer into her voice. From his frown, it wasn't working. "It's not that. Just Agostino."

Like magic, Paddy's brows snapped together. "Aw hell," he said, running a hand through his hundreds of little braids. The decorative beads at the ends, painstakingly threaded on by hand every morning he was off-duty, clicked and rattled. "What brings you out here?" Paddy asked. "I would've thought you'd have more than enough supplies in your sheds to build another house."

Another thing on the list of Things Not to Tell Agostino (an altered list from the items on Amina and Angelo's Things Not to Tell Your Father) was the small woodworking "shop" Armonie kept in the storage sheds out back. Agostino knew of the tools and supplies there, but Armonie was careful to keep him from catching her actually working out back. Paddy knew because he helped her with some of the designs and Luka, his boyfriend, helped her to sell them at a local market. They also helped her collect wood aside from the lumber found at the hardware stores.

"She's helping me," Saetta's hardlight projection said cheerfully and Armonie resisted the urge to punch him, seeing what form he chose. "I asked her for help getting supplies."

Paddy eyed him. "You look a little young," he said dubiously. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

To his credit, Saetta didn't seem to have too much issue playing human; to his detriment, it was the wrong age group to choose. "I'm not _that_ young," he said indignantly, wrinkling his nose in a surprisingly convincing way. "I don't _need_ to be in school."

"Just drop it," Armonie advised Paddy, pinching the bridge of her nose in annoyance. "It's better that way."

Paddy glanced between them, a deep frown crossing his face, but he did drop it without another peep on the matter. Armonie made a mental note to get him a treat later in thanks. "What kind of supplies?" he asked instead. "Working on another project?"

"Metalworking," Saetta said cheerfully. "Armonie said she'd help me fix up an old car."

 _If only he knew_ , Armonie thought darkly to herself. But she was glad he didn't; it wasn't something she'd want on his conscience. When it wasn't necessary for him to do his job, Paddy was a terrible liar.

Of course this answer only served to confuse Paddy further and he seemed to give up. _Later?_ His eyes asked Armonie and it left her a bitter taste in her mouth to lie with a short nod. They made it through a few other pleasantries before Paddy took his leave of them and Saetta and Armonie could finally enter the hardware store.

"Batteries at 95%," Saetta told her cheerfully when she asked if he was alright. "And I don't believe this store is large enough to test my full range; if not, I'll just move."

Armonie nodded, not even pretending to fully comprehend what he was trying to say and got a dolly cart. He was cheerful enough, staying at her side even as he looked around in interest. If he meant to blend in he did a poor job of it, as the shock of bright green hair on his head and his apparent age drew curious looks. No one stopped them or questioned his appearance, for which Armonie was thankful.

"Who was that?" he asked quietly as they looked at copper piping. "Was he a friend of yours?"

"Yes," Armonie admitted with a sigh. She bit her tongue against telling Saetta that it hurt her to lie to him like that. Some things were better left unsaid.

Saetta hummed, selecting two long pipes and tucking them on the cart so they wouldn't roll around too much as Armonie pushed it down the aisles. He assured her that he wouldn't need any pipe cutters when she tentatively asked and she took his word on it. They moved through the appliance section to find metal sheeting.

"He seemed…genuinely concerned," Saetta said hesitantly as if unsure how to bring up the topic or unsure of what to say. Armonie said nothing, watching him inspect the store's wares. An employee hovered nearby, watching them curiously as she wrung her hands. Perhaps she was concerned that Saetta would hurt himself or cause trouble as he handled the large sheets of metal. As if he didn't see her – perhaps he didn't – he told Armonie, "This isn't quite the material or quality I was expecting."

Armonie snorted when the girl frowned. Clearly she could hear him, which was a problem. "Please _tell me you speak Ivrit?_ " The girl looked blank; Saetta blinked at her over his shoulder.

" _Naturally_ ," he replied. " _Why-? Oh…_ "

Bravely the girl stepped forward. "Can I help you with anything?" she asked Saetta, carefully not looking at Armonie.

"I'm helping my mother," Saetta told her in accented Italian. Despite speaking without an accent earlier and that she had clearly heard him, the girl didn't seem too bothered that he suddenly seemed to develop one between sentences. On the other hand, Armonie wasn't sure how to feel about being referred to as Saetta's "mother". "We're building a project."

The girl smiled. "What kind of project? Do you need any help finding anything?" she eyed their cart and their haul so far – two spools of copper wire, an acetylene torch kit, five different lengths and diameters of copper piping, and _a lot_ of duct tape.

Saetta gave her a winning smile. "No thank you," he said. "But I'll be sure to find you if we do."

" _There you go breaking her heart,_ " Armonie told him dryly in Ivrit. It was a struggle to keep her face and voice solemn. " _She was quite taken with you – probably imagining a future with you where she pops out your babies._ "

To her lessening surprise, Saetta threw his head back (a very human gesture, she noted) with a loud laugh. " _I'm not sure that type of interspecies breeding would be possible_ ," he said when he composed himself enough to speak. The girl, further down the aisle, was bright red likely guessing (correctly) that they were talking about her.

The rest of their trip was joking together in Ivrit and somehow her wariness of Saetta lessened even more. Their odd hodge-podge of materials in the cart grew to small electronics and some of the car parts they had in stock. To the mixed dismay and joy of the workers, they nearly cleared out their supply of nuts, bolts, washers, and other assorted odds-and-ends.

How Saetta paid for thousands of Euros of materials _from one store_ , Armonie didn't want to know and he didn't really offer an answer other than an almost-guilty glance over his shoulder at her. When they rolled their much-heavier cart out to Armonie's car, they found Paddy leaning against the hatch.

" _Wow,_ " the officer said, eyeing the materials. "What kind of project are you working on again?"

Saetta gave him a beatific smile that Armonie could tell didn't fool him one bit. She focused on wrestling the seats down so she could fit the pipes and sheets of metal they bought in the back. "I'm an artist," she heard Saetta tell Paddy. "Armonie agreed to help me fix a car but I saw a few other things I could use for my other projects."

"Yeah," Paddy said dryly. "And you're…what, seventeen? Eighteen?"

"Oh, I'm _much_ older than that," Saetta replied and Armonie rolled her eyes where Paddy couldn't see. The stubborn seat finally gave way and she eased it down, cursing to herself when the cushions got in the way and she found Angelo's missing shin-guard wedged between the seats.

The seats clicked with the addition of the weight of Paddy's upper body. He peered at her. "Do you guys need help loading?" He murmured quietly to Armonie in Ivrit, " _I'm worried about you. You're not acting like yourself._ "

" _I know,_ " she murmured back. "I won't say 'no' to help," she added in Italian, louder so Saetta could hear. The picture of a human teenager, he was leaning against the side door, texting. Armonie wasn't sure if it was a real phone or not – for all she knew it could be just an extension of his "hardlight projection"; more lies and falsehoods.

Paddy grunted, taking one end of the metal sheets Saetta purchased while Armonie took the other. "You could at least _help_ ," Paddy grumbled to Saetta.

"I _bought_ the materials," Saetta teased but put away his phone regardless and hefted one of the spools of wire. "Isn't that help enough?"

With much swearing – and many distrustful stares at Saetta by Paddy – they loaded Armonie's Nissan and tentatively closed the back, sucking in a nervous when it looked like the sharp corners of the metal sheets and the ends of the copper pipes would hit her back windshield. The hatch closed and they all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Careful driving," Paddy said. " _I'm scared for you,_ " he added in Ivrit when they clasped arms in goodbye. " _Text me later._ "

Armonie rolled her eyes with an amused smile – exactly how she would look if she had everything under control. Her stomach flipped again at lying to him but she was used to doing things she didn't like for the greater good; and in this case, keeping Paddy in the dark was very much for the greater good.

Seeing her expression, Paddy relaxed but she could see that the cop in him was still tense, still wary. "Well if you'll excuse me, I'm late for my lunch with Luka."

Pulling out her phone, Armonie saw that she had a text from the man in question, unread for ten minutes: _I'm going to kill him_.

 _You can hide the body in my yard,_ Armonie texted back, unable to hide a dangerous smile.

"He texted you, didn't he?" Paddy grumbled as he backed away. "Tell him I'm on my way! It's not like it's that far away…"

"Text him yourself," Armonie replied with a smirk. Her fingers typed, _some of my plants could use the fertilizer_.

 _PLEASE tell me he's on his way?_ Luka asked in the next set of messages. _I look like an idiot waiting here alone…for an hour._ A pause as he typed, signified by a rippling ellipsis in the bottom-left corner of Armonie's phone. _Can you eat plants fertilized by a human body?_

Saetta waited patiently as Armonie chuckled and tucked away her phone. His arms were crossed, looking as much at ease as if he were a teenage loiterer that chose a spot against her van to relax. "I'm sorry if I'm causing a strain on your friendship," Saetta told her quietly, his face morphing into a convincing expression of regret.

"He's is concerned for me," she told him, her good mood brought on by Luka's dark humor dissipating. "Friends do that."

The autonomous robotic organism said nothing, looking down with a nod. "For what it's worth…I _am_ sorry."

He looked so much like Angelo did when he was in trouble but she knew that it had to be intentional – robots couldn't _feel_ emotion and the effort it took for him to emote using his "hardlight projection" meant that it was deliberate. She said nothing, moving to get into her car. "Where to next?"

Saetta still looked sad, gripping his elbows across his bony teenage chest, but when he answered it was with a measure of his earlier enthusiasm. "The auto-parts store." He walked back to the orange Lamborghini and slid in.

Shaking her head, Armonie started her own car and pulled out of the parking lot, taking it slow so as to not jostle the equipment weighing down the back of her car.

It turned out that the most complicated thing about the entire trip was unloading the materials from Armonie's van. Throughout the entire trip they had packed her car so efficiently that unpacking was incredibly difficult. Fortunately, Saetta was not bound by physical limitations of an organic body and was able to lift out the heavier and bulkier materials on his own.

Armonie found an old wooden chest for Saetta to use for the smaller parts and the two of them lined it with old pieces of scrap canvas and drop cloths. She watched the Lamborghini split apart and unfold, wheels tucking up on his hips and shoulders, headlights shifting up on his forearms. It was fascinating to watch, shiny orange plating shifting and moving over moving metal components, glass and car doors splitting seamlessly to tuck into place on his back like a beetle's wings.

Saetta kneeled, putting a shiny orange kneeguard into a puddle of mud as he held out both hands, cupping them at her direction to catch some of the smaller components that she tugged out of the backseat.

"Will you rust?" Armonie asked, nodding at his knee when she paused to take a break.

Saetta's physical head followed her gesture, turning the blue lights that mimicked his eyes to the knee in the ground. His facial components split in what could loosely be called a grimace. "I don't rust," he informed her loftily, his grimace shifting into a hesitant smile. Throughout the second half of their errands, he had been strangely silent and morose, acquiring the parts he needed with the mechanical efficiency she had initially expected of him. "Well…I _can_ , but not from anything I should be able to catch on your planet."

"Our rust is too primitive for you?" Armonie teased halfheartedly.

The hesitant smile on Saetta's alien face widened. "Of course," he informed her teasingly, his voice underscored by light metallic rattles and rumbles like a purring engine. "I'm far too advanced for something so…"

"Asinine?" Armonie suggested, finding herself smiling back at Saetta.

Saetta's grin in response lit up his entire face. "Something like that."

* * *

"That sounds nice," Jordan said wistfully. "Like you got on pretty quick with Jack."

Armonie smiled. "I still didn't trust him but…I suppose you could say that."

In her lap as a papillon, an usual form for him due to its size and the fluffy nature of its fur, Mutt grumbled. "Meanwhile I was sitting in the middle of the forest staring at trees and nature and shit."

"You had fun," Armonie teased, using her free arm to scratch under his chin. "It wasn't actually Angelo that introduced you two to video games."

Mutt grumbled, his growl sounding much cuter from a much smaller form. "I was _bored_ ," he informed her. "There was nothing _to do_."

"So you played video games?" Jordan asked.

Armonie smiled and scratched under his chin again, ignoring the nips she received. She tapped his nose and the unimpressed look Mutt leveled at her made Jordan chuckle. Kent topped off their glasses and put the bottle in the freezer.

"We both did, actually," Jack murmured, ruffling his feathers. Unlike Mutt whose mouth moved in time with his speech, Jack's beak didn't move and his voice seemed to appear from the air around his head. "I just got a much later start than Mutt, there, did…considering I was fixing him up while he played his games."

Jordan smiled serenely. She could feel a slight flush in her cheeks from the alcohol despite how slow she had taken it. Shaking her head, she retrieved a soda from the kitchen and cut the alcohol with it. Kent frowned as if it was a personal slight against him as the dark liquid sloshed in her short rocks glass. It wouldn't do much in terms of diluting the alcohol, but every little bit counts and Jordan didn't want to miss any part of Armonie's painful story. "What did you play?"

Mutt shifted in Armonie's lap. "Racing games," he admitted at last. "A few first-person shooters. Call of Duty."

"I didn't like the fighting for the sake of fighting; I got enough of that in real life," Saetta admitted, ruffling his striking feathers. "So I followed the story-based games. When I met Angelo and he found out that we played video games, he recommended a few for me. We used to play together…sort of." He ruffled his feathers again so he was entirely puffed up like a balloon. Glowing particles like dust fluttered along the edges of his feathers – Jordan wondered if perhaps they were the very particles of light and air that made up his hardlight projection, visible only due to her inebriation and his position in comparison to her and the sunlight streaming through the window. "We started a game together, created a character with a back story based entirely on compromise."

Shifting into another dog, one that Jordan wasn't entirely familiar with but still fit in the cradle of Armonie's lap, Mutt huffed. "They flipped coins," he said dryly. "They already had their characters made from their own games and flipped coins on which choice between the two they would make."

Jack spread his wings and screeched like an eagle indignantly. From Armonie's wince, the sound hurt and he immediately looked as remorseful as a bird of prey could. He leaned over and nibbled on her ear in apology.

"Angelo and I made models," Jack admitted when he calmed down. Evidently it was a sore subject for him; his normally cheerful voice was much flatter. "Characters, weapons, armor…when Armonie and Agostino were making plans to go to the US for a visit, we were planning on going to a 'Comic-Con' dressed up as our favorite characters."

Armonie looked sad as she bent her hand back to run the back of her fingers along the speckled feathers of Jack's breast. "Your costume would be much easier than his," she teased. "Considering your clothes are also a part of your disguise." Jack nipped her fingers and Mutt chuckled from her lap. Her smile was sad. "A few of my weapons are repurposed from their original models," Armonie admitted. "Once Jack found out about what happened, he made them all work."

Thinking back to the futuristic rifle she had seen Armonie cradle, clean, and wield with surprising tenderness and deadly efficiency in turn, Jordan nodded. She remembered the sharp metallic sounds, the scream of the air as burning blue light shot from the muzzle and it made much more sense to her why she would have such an odd weapon in combination from her own modified human-made weapons.

It was another piece of her family she could keep with her.

They remained silent for a while, the humans sipping their drinks. There was a slight flush to Armonie's cheeks that probably matched Jordan's. "Not too much," Jack grumbled, nipping at her ear again. "Your equilibrium won't handle it well."

"Yeah," Armonie said, making a face when she saw the interest in curiosity on the Rogues' faces around the table. "The nanites in my bloodstream prevents me from getting _too_ drunk and even if it did, it wouldn't be a good idea to be too inebriated as it would affect my equilibrium."

Jack clicked his beak. "She doesn't metabolize it well," he said disapprovingly. "It makes her nauseous."

Even though it wasn't funny, Jordan forced down a laugh and forced down a smile. Armonie could see it and offered a crooked smile as they tapped glasses over the center of the table in a mocking toast. "One that can't get drunk and one that drinks enough for the both of them," Jordan said, her control breaking in the face of alcohol.

Armonie laughed _even though it wasn't funny_ and threw back her drink, ignoring the restless flapping of Jack's wings on her shoulder and how Mutt rolled his unnaturally-blue eyes. There was a hint of finality to it - _I think that's enough for one day_ , her challenging eyes said over the rim of her glass as she put it down firmly on the table.

"Sounds good," Jordan replied as if she had said so out loud. "Wanna help me cook dinner?"

The women, bonded through fire and blood laughed. Whatever annoyance from her return from the NEST base or lingering grief from speaking of her family dissipated like fog in the sun. While Katie shoveled reheated stew in her mouth with Jazz as her attendant, Jordan and Armonie slipped into the kitchen. Mutt and Jack disappeared, reappearing to sit in the vacated seats. No one said nothing as Jordan stumbled into Armonie, who braced her with a casual arm slung around her waist.

 _Think they'll be OK?_ Katie signed, tapping her finger on the table to catch everyone's attention. Seeing that Kent was still craning his head after Jordan, she scooped the last dregs of stew in her spoon and shot it at his head. _Stop it_.

Kent look indignant while the Rogues around the table laughed silently. _Stop_ what? He asked, wiping the stew off his face.

Raoul tapped the table to get Katie's attention. _You're obsessing over her. It's creepy_.

With a dark look at them, Kent disappeared from the table; a moment later, they could hear the sound of his engine starting. Raoul, in a surprising fit of emotion, hid an impish grin behind his hand.

 _He parked sideways in the driveway,_ Hound signed when Katie glanced at him curiously. _I had wondered why but…_

The pair in the kitchen erupted in laughter and Mutt, still in his canine form, looked entirely too innocent. From outside there was an angry rev of an engine, the sound of a transformation sequence, and then a startlingly loud sound of something heavy hitting the ground. Jazz "translated" the sounds for Katie who joined her too-loud laughter with her roommates'.

 _(Engine rev.) (Kent/Prowl transformed/changed) (Jump over car-Raoul) (Tripped-fell/hit wall) (Drove-away very-angry)._

 _What a baby_ , Katie signed, sending the rest of the house into howling laughter once more. She hid from everyone but Jazz, who stared at her with a tender smile, how happy she was to hear the two women in the kitchen happy. Jordan leaned against Armonie who was giving the ex-officer a shy smile as if unsure of what to do. The two of them prepared dinner like that and didn't seem to mind that everyone at the dining room table watched them fondly.

The conversation continued on around her and when it was evident that Katie wasn't paying attention to him, Jazz stopped translating. She watched the two in the kitchen, how Armonie carefully taught Jordan how to chop vegetables. Privately, Katie thought that it said a lot of their relationship that despite Jordan's clear inebriation that Armonie didn't seem to have a huge issue allowing Jordan to have a knife.

One day she hoped to have such a trusting relationship with someone. _Well_ , she amended, cutting a glance at Jazz to find that he was already looking at her. Her Rogue guardian smiled tenderly, an emotion she couldn't recognize in his grey eyes. _Someone other than Jazz_.

Blushing, she looked back at the remaining Rogues in the dining room and kitchen. They were all smiling as they spoke with each other, even Mutt who had returned to his Irish wolfhound form and now towered over everyone at the table from his place on Jordan's chair. Saetta's hair shifted colors like an oil slick or a lava lamp, rippling through colors in a seemingly random pattern as he spoke.

 _One day,_ she promised to herself. For now, she enjoyed watching their easy camaraderie and feeling the false warmth of Jazz's arm against hers.

* * *

 **I know that name-signs are an odd kind of subject but I had fun coming up with a few of them. Unfortunately, especially in this story, they aren't that relevant so it's unlikely that I'll describe them. But if you're curious…**

 **Name-sign: Prowl/Kent** **: modified sign for "hunt". Instead of "finger-guns", a "K" for Kent and a "P" for Prowl. Both are similar signs so I kind of imagine Katie and Jazz switching back and forth between the two.**

 **Name-sign: Raoul** **: modified sign for "bow (tie)". It's basically pantomiming tying a bow but the end motion of pulling the knot tight, both hands make "R" for Raoul.**

 **Name-sign: Autobot** **: an "A" circling the face - in reference to the Autobot sigil**

 **Name-sign: Decepticon** **: modified sign for "F*** you", a "D" beneath the chin and gestured outward instead of the open hand. Usually accompanied by a middle finger on the hand not making the gesture. Saying that they're holding a grudge would be a massive understatement.**

 **Name-sign: Ratchet** **: tapping the "R" shape against the nose - a joke between Jazz and Katie regarding his nose...and his habit of "smelling" pheromones.**

 **Name-sign: Jordan** **: a "J" followed by the sign "drink (alcohol)" - a "Y" shape with the thumb tapped against the lips. Even though deaf people are typically the ones to "assign" a name sign, it was one suggested by Jordan herself and continued because she honestly didn't seem to mind too much. If she was in a particularly bad mood the "drinking" sign would be done with both hands when referring to herself. Prowl/Kent doesn't like it so he absolutely** _ **will not**_ **use it and will instead finger-spell her name if necessary.**

 **Forms** **: Since there are a lot of forms the Autobots, Decepticons, and Rogues take, sometimes Jazz or Katie will specify. "Car-(person)" - or relevant form - refers to when they're in their alternate form, while "Man/Woman-(person)" refers to someone in their holoform.**

 **Katie's relationship with the Rogues** **: Despite living with them, Katie actually doesn't have a very close relationship with most of the Rogues (except, of course, Jazz). They all like her well enough but they're still a bit closed-off around her in comparison to the rest of the group, simply because they aren't quite used to her. Despite their rather friendly interactions, they all know that Katie is** _ **different**_ **\- she's not a soldier or a fighter like Jordan or Armonie even if she bears similar scars. In some ways they're all waiting for the other shoe to drop so they can see what she can do when she's not a prisoner.**


End file.
